How to remove games from other users from personal library?

[Banana Soufflé]

Situation: One computer with multiple users each having their own steam account. Games owned by user A is not owned by user B. Still the game is listed in the library of B (even though family view is not activated i.e. no desire to share exists). With all the sales, humble bundles etc. there is a constant influx of games you don’t own, you don’t want to own and they are cluttering up your personal library.

Terrible Workaround:
User B “hides” the game from its own library. It however remains searchable and more importantly this has to be done for every freaking game separately. Thus forcing you to role-play-game-librarian-management-simulator instead of playing actual interesting games.

Actual Solution:
Has anyone found a way to remove games of another user, you don’t own and don’t want to play from your personal library?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Right click, and hide that one way.

Another is getting another drive, install OS on it, just have duel boot enable, so you select your own drive, other person select their own drive. Steam will only see the drive it was told to look into, which is the drive it's install on, and any other drive you tell it via settings, but if keep it one drive, it only see what on that drive for install games.

Steam client will show what's installed, because using same drive it can see on.

[Banana Soufflé]

Thx for the quick reply.

The “hide” is not really a satisfying workaround.

Your idea with the multi-boot setup is interesting. It is though a bit overkill to create on the HDD for every user a seperate partition with its own OS & Steam for every single user. Especially since Valve actually knows, which game is linked to which account. Otherwise they couldn’t replace the “install” button with the “purchase” button as they do. So there must (or at least it should be feasible to have) the ability to somehow not list all not-owned games.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Nope. All users using the same exe on the same drive on the same hdd will always see the games from all accounts.

[Banana Soufflé]

Oh! The last reply might be the solution

Steam.exe can't know all the games that are installed on the same drive (that is why we have to manually link 3rd party games). So if I create for every user its own steam installation, there is for every installation a distinct ...\steamapps\common path and thus theoretically should create for every user a distinct library. I'll give it a shot and write down the solution in case it works.

[$2 Hero]

play every game you want to hide

[Banana Soufflé]

Needs more verifying, but it seems to work without issues so far.

So the OS is on the C: SSD. No separate OS installation or multi-boot setup required. Just ensure that you install steam on the D: HDD by manually setting a unique path for each user. So install steam into the path D:\...\Steam User A, D:\...\Steam User B, and so on. Yes, it uses more disk space, but that is so cheap meanwhile so… meh. Open each path and copy a shortcut on the desktop. Rename each shortcut for the intended user i.e. rename to Steam User A for the shortcut pointing to D:\...\Steam User A. With the shortcuts you ensure your peps don’t get confused, which installation to use.

Voilà. No more games of other people messing with your OCD optimized clean library structure. A solution though for a very specific situation of collaborative use of 1 PC.

Thx Shadowds and Hotsauce for inspiring this idea

[Banana Soufflé]

Originally posted by My Name Is The Plague:

play every game you want to hide

As stated in OP this isn't about hiding, but having clean libraries without extra manual work when someone buys games. The found solution won't hide the games. Everyone can see what is installed on the HDD.

[I ate all the cheese]

Originally posted by Banana Soufflé:

Needs more verifying, but it seems to work without issues so far.

So the OS is on the C: SSD. No separate OS installation or multi-boot setup required. Just ensure that you install steam on the D: HDD by manually setting a unique path for each user. So install steam into the path D:\...\Steam User A, D:\...\Steam User B, and so on. Yes, it uses more disk space, but that is so cheap meanwhile so… meh. Open each path and copy a shortcut on the desktop. Rename each shortcut for the intended user i.e. rename to Steam User A for the shortcut pointing to D:\...\Steam User A. With the shortcuts you ensure your peps don’t get confused, which installation to use.

Voilà. No more games of other people messing with your OCD optimized clean library structure. A solution though for a very specific situation of collaborative use of 1 PC.

Thx Shadowds and Hotsauce for inspiring this idea

I have tried that, but for some reason, D:/ does not show up

[Banana Soufflé]

Maybe a silly question, but you do have a 2 partitions right? So you have one C:/ and D:/ partition, when you check your Windows File Explorer. (I’ll just assume for now you are using Win10)

In case you do have 2 partitions, do you maybe mean that you are unable to find D:/ when the installation exe is asking you to enter the installation path?

If it is neither of this 2 please specify what you exactly mean with „D:/ does not show up”? I hope I will be able to help you.

[Iceira]

Multi user on same pc will have this, as same show , idea is , dont have multi installation of same games, but same open up for see others, what prevent you from make own collection view per real owned bought items you have paid for yourself.

ps.
this will be solved then 1 user per pc. not before. imsure you dont want to remove other before that happend.

[I ate all the cheese]

Originally posted by Banana Soufflé:

Maybe a silly question, but you do have a 2 partitions right? So you have one C:/ and D:/ partition, when you check your Windows File Explorer. (I’ll just assume for now you are using Win10)

In case you do have 2 partitions, do you maybe mean that you are unable to find D:/ when the installation exe is asking you to enter the installation path?

If it is neither of this 2 please specify what you exactly mean with „D:/ does not show up”? I hope I will be able to help you.

It is the second one
Also, I don't know if I have 2 partitions

[Banana Soufflé]

I assume for now that you are using Windows 10 (Win10) as your Operating System (OS).

On the lower left of your screen you have the possibility for searching apps installed on your OS. Type in "Explorer" and Win10 will show you on top of menu this App. If you look there at the root i.e. your PC you see the different partitions resp. drives that your PC has. E.g. (C:), (D:) etc. If you only have a (C:), it means that your PC is running on a default single partition.

[I ate all the cheese]

Originally posted by Banana Soufflé:

I assume for now that you are using Windows 10 (Win10) as your Operating System (OS).

On the lower left of your screen you have the possibility for searching apps installed on your OS. Type in "Explorer" and Win10 will show you on top of menu this App. If you look there at the root i.e. your PC you see the different partitions resp. drives that your PC has. E.g. (C:), (D:) etc. If you only have a (C:), it means that your PC is running on a default single partition.

yeah it only has C: for the local disk
Should I make a partition, and if I should, how do I make a partition?

[Banana Soufflé]

There are pro and cons with multiple partions. It depends on your personal use case.

I don't have seperate partions on a single physical drive. My SSD is C: and my HDD is D:. I've installed OS and software on C to benefit from the SSD's faster read-speed, while keeping the big junk of personal data (fotos, music,...) on the HDD. This is a common setup. Steam is an exception in my case and was moved from the SSD to HDD because of the space issues (too many games and nobody wants to constantly install/deinstall them).

The suggested solution have per user a clean games library was specific to my use case where you also have users with the same games i.e. if you have multiple steam installations for X users, you increase the storage volumne with steam itself and the games in its steemapps if the same game is owned by multiple users. As HDD are generally cheaper then SSD storage solutions, I suggested to use D instead of C to same some money and headaches with storage space. If you are swimming in money it really doesn't matter. You can have the above solution also on C resp. on your e.g. 2TB SSD.


Since you are not familiar with creating a partition, I am hesitant to recommend that you do so, especially since it is not mandatory necessary. Before you go ahead the question is, if you are the only one using the PC. Because if you mess it up, you will mess it up for everyone else.

If you really wanna do it, google is your friend. There are many guides like this https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-make-partitions-windows-10,36643.html with step by step descriptions and screenshots far better then I can ever provide it here in steam forum. However before you go ahead i really recommend that you first confirm that you have the ability to do an OS recovery (since you are tinkering with C: your only drive i.e. where the OS is on it) and furthermore have a backup of your personal data.

[Blaagh]

sorry haven't read all posts in detail but I see the problem there is only 1 steam installation supposed to be on 1 pc. even with multiple windows-users

I would go about this way:
make a little cmd batch file that uses the SUBST command, which is used to assign a virtual drive letter to a given path.

so it would be something in the line of 'subst x: %homedir%\steamlib' in the file that has to be run every time a win-user is logging in and -before- steam is launched and then either install into that drive or add a 2nd library folder on that drive x: while steam is on c:

(syntax may be a bit off - this is just from the top of my hat)

anybody has experience with this approach?

cheers