Steam client won't open

[Shinobi]

Since the new UI update, the steam window cannot open anymore. It does open the setting and friends tab and only works in big picture mode. No window shows when clicking the library, store or community tab in the minimized menu shortcut. Please help!

[Zebulan]

I had this same issue during the beta and rolled back. It's unfortunate that it was released with this issue.

To clarify, Steam opens with Windows Launch and is minimized to system tray. Double-left-clicking on the Steam icon does nothing: Steam is running but the window will not open.

You can still right-click on the Steam icon and get the friends list open, or launch recent games, but that's it.

I manage to "work around" this issue by launching a game then choosing for Steam to Exit. When that happens, the Steam client actually opens and gives me a prompt that it's closing the game - and it's waiting for the game to shut down - and I click Cancel quickly. But now my Steam client is open.

At this point, I can close the Steam client back down to the system tray, and reopen it normally.

It only doesn't open the first time Steam launches, and it's extremely frustrating.

[.meglin]

Every since the latest steam UI update, I've been unable to use steam due to the fact that whenever i start up steam it's just a black screen, including my friends list and communications, it has made it impossible to be able to play anymore games, and i haven't been able to access my library since the update.
I've already reinstalled steam and restarted my computer, now I'm unsure of what to do.
Im running steam on mac os 10.13.6

[Shinobi]

Originally posted by Zebulan:

I had this same issue during the beta and rolled back. It's unfortunate that it was released with this issue.

To clarify, Steam opens with Windows Launch and is minimized to system tray. Double-left-clicking on the Steam icon does nothing: Steam is running but the window will not open.

You can still right-click on the Steam icon and get the friends list open, or launch recent games, but that's it.

I manage to "work around" this issue by launching a game then choosing for Steam to Exit. When that happens, the Steam client actually opens and gives me a prompt that it's closing the game - and it's waiting for the game to shut down - and I click Cancel quickly. But now my Steam client is open.

At this point, I can close the Steam client back down to the system tray, and reopen it normally.

It only doesn't open the first time Steam launches, and it's extremely frustrating.

I can't get it to work even with this, I really hope this gets fixed very soon.

[Shinobi]

Originally posted by Romil:

From another thread, create a new shortcut on your desktop and use

"C:\<path_to_steam>\steam.exe" -vgui

This gets you back to the old UI for now.

This fixed it for me

[Zebulan]

Originally posted by Shinobi:

Originally posted by Romil:

From another thread, create a new shortcut on your desktop and use

"C:\<path_to_steam>\steam.exe" -vgui

This gets you back to the old UI for now.

This fixed it for me

This was super useful and helped me as well.
By the way, if you want to edit the Steam process that launches with your PC, you can edit the Registry Entry. It is located here on Windows 10:

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Then edit the record for Steam to add the -vgui as proposed. Worked like a charm!