How to Disable all (or some) notifications completely.

[BlatheringTumorCells]

I think this is the right forum to post this is.

I have seen a lot of people complain about steam not allowing you to disable things like group event notifications, the notifications stealing focus from games (there is a button to disable in-game steam community in settings, but the problem with this is that you cannot take screenshots, trade, have the FPS counter etc.)
I personally had this problem with me trying to speedrun games, I would screenshot the final score to steam, then getting added by some random scammer and it gets caught in the video that i'm recording to youtube, and you cannot even avoid that by going to offline mode.
If not streaming you could disable internet completely during the session which could be quite inconvenient.

So I was testing with things a little and found a solution for this.

Removing all notifications completely

1: You have to go to your steam folder, navigate to (Steam)\resource\styles
-Copy steam.styles
2: Go to (Steam)\Skins
-Create a path of folders (Steam)\skins\<any name here>\resource\styles
-Paste steam.styles

3: Open steam.styles in (Steam)\skins\<folder name here>\resource\styles
-Search for " Notification "

-This is what you should find: (line 220-226)

    Notifications.PanelPosition     "BottomRight"
    Notifications.PanelPosition     "TopRight" [$OSX]
    Notifications.SlideDirection    "Vertical"
    Notifications.FadeInTime      "0.45"
    Notifications.FadeOutTime     "0.45"
    Notifications.DisplayTime     "6.0"
    Notifications.StackSize       "3"

-Replace it with this:

    Notifications.PanelPosition     "BottomRight"
    Notifications.PanelPosition     "TopRight" [$OSX]
    Notifications.SlideDirection    "None"
    Notifications.FadeInTime      "0"
    Notifications.FadeOutTime     "0"
    Notifications.DisplayTime     "0"
    Notifications.StackSize       "0"

Finishing up
-Once all that is done go to steam settings, go to the tab " Interface "
-There is a skin selection list there, you need to select the skin you named the folder as in the previous step. (if it's not in the list, you messed up.)
-Once selected press OK and restart steam.

Hope someone found this useful and that this works for most people.

[(SPQR) Major Hawker (L)-[( )]]

good job, but too much work. Easier to just click the x on the event. Steam should not force us to even see events if we never signed up for them.

[BlatheringTumorCells]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Sgt-Hawker:

good job, but too much work. Easier to just click the x on the event. Steam should not force us to even see events if we never signed up for them.

This is currently the only way to get them off, so basically it's mandatory for anyone who actually wants to use steam features in-game (you cannot even trade if its disabled) and doesn't want to get annoying pop-ups and stuff while having it on.

[Dowlphwin]

Thanks. This should be a guide or sticky or something.
Couldn't try whether it works yet, but if it does, that's at least a workaround. It's appalling (as usual) that Valve is too lazy to implement proper settings that allow control over all of this. Because it's still annoying especially when recording gameplay. The public might be able to read stuff that's private.
Hell, these settings should have global and game-specific settings even, so that for example you can turn off achievement notifications for very immersive games and specifically have them on when you attempt to get achievements.

[Dowlphwin]

Damn, does Valve actively want to annoy us or what? At least the selective way doesn't work. I did as instructed with the skin I have active anyway, but still get notification popups. I'll now try to additionally do the first step to completely disable all and see whether that works.

[BlatheringTumorCells]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Dandowlion:

Damn, does Valve actively want to annoy us or what? At least the selective way doesn't work. I did as instructed with the skin I have active anyway, but still get notification popups. I'll now try to additionally do the first step to completely disable all and see whether that works.

All notifications thing should work, I have had plenty of friends who stream use that.

[Jolly]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Dandowlion:

Damn, does Valve actively want to annoy us or what?

It would seem that way. Note that the only reason steam has any features users might consider useful is because it helps valve sell more games - not because they give a flying frick about players. You might think, given that they make ungodly amounts of money doing next to nothing selling games that they could spare a few dollars to fix something that annoys tons of clients but apparently the'd rather be screwing with VR few will be able to use or consoles nobody wants.

[zanglebert]

@OP

This actually works! Don't know why Valve doesn't allow for an option to disable Achievement notifications, but your suggestion is a great workaround for now.