Update Steam Apps without starting them?

[J.punisher]

Other than a lot of asked questions about starting Apps without updating them I want to archieve the opposite: Is it possible to update all installed Steam Apps without starting them (e.g. if there is no update)?

[Forcen]

The opposite question is asked a lot because steam updates your games automatically in the background, no full way to stop it. That makes your question confusing since they should update themselves when you have steam running.

Also why would you want to update apps that has no updates?

[J.punisher]

I don't want to update Apps if there are no updates ... for me it always looks like that:
1. I have to start steam (maybe steam updates itself first)
2. An update is not downloaded or installed, only if I start lets say CS:GO
=> if there is no update the Apps starts immediately
=> if there is an update it downloads and installes and than starts the App or not

I would like to simply update them all (e.g. in a moment I do not need internet and have capacity free on the pc while doing other stuff) but I do not want that the App starts immediately if there are no updates

I have only unchecked allow updates while playing but they are not done automatically in the background while steam is just in the system tray

[Forcen]

The best way to do this is to start steam when your PC starts and leave it running in the background, I do this and I can't remember the last time I had to wait for a game to update before playing it.

Steam will then keep your games updated in the background, before playing them.
There is a setting to start steam automatically when your PC starts.

EDIT: missed the part where you said you didn't want this.
In that case, start steam some time before you plan to play a game.

[J.punisher]

Ok thanks! I thought maybe there is an explicit "update now" option somewhere hidden ;)

[Forcen]

No, it's kind of designed to be running in the background since it has instant messaging, patching and so on. It doesn't use that much capacity.

Some times updates are queued to download later on, I'm not sure how it determines what game and all that, maybe it's the ones you don't play that often that waits a bit.

You should be able to see any queued downloads if you go to Library>Downloads.

You can verify that a game has all the files manually, but this is per game and all that. This is if some file is missing or incorrect, but it should also patch the game if it didn't just send the patch to you. Check downloads first, here is info about that: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

In short, just start steam so steam can do other steam stuff than starting your games.

[J.punisher]

Ok coming back here now because right now I hat this situation:
Steam was running like for the last 1,5 hours ...
But when I started CS:GO there comes an Error like "You are using an outdated steam client. Please check for updates before running CS:GO" ... when I try now to close steam it says "Please close CS:GO before closing steam" .. -_-

Easy solved by good old task manager but .. it sucks anyway :D

[Forcen]

Wait, is your steam client not updated?
So you tried to start csgo, it didn't work and then you could not shut down steam even though csgo wasn't running? Or did you get csgo running somehow anyway?
Not sure if something is bugged or that you used the task manager when you didn't need to because you did something the wrong way...

What if you just click Steam>check for client updates ?

[J.punisher]

yeah was a bug I guess
steam was already running ... when I started CS:GO it couldn't be launched because off old steam client error.
But it seems that somehow something got started anyway because than I couldn't close steam because it said cs:go is running and I have to lose it first.
Finaly I killed steam bootstrap manually and than when I started steam again it got updated..

I didn't see an option "check for updates"

[Forcen]

It should be there if you click the "Steam" thing right at the top left of the steam window, click "check for Steam updates". This updates the client.