Do not automatically download updates over metered connection

[Mortimer]

Steam tends to update games and resume unfinished downloads as soon as it connects to the Internet, without even letting the user know.

The thing is mobile connections get quite fast these days, so you may run out of your subscription gigabytes and get billed for the excess in a very short time.

My suggestion is that the Steam client does not automatically download updates or resume unfinished downloads if the connection appears to be mobile (ie. "mobile" "gprs" "3g" "4g" "5g" "lte" keywords in hostname) unless the download has been manually resumed or initiated in that network.

[nullable]

Mobile connections aren't necessarily metered. Ultimately if you have extra special and complicated circumstances, it's probably your job to administer that.

If you're not going to remember to shut Steam down when not in use, you should probably make the bandwidth limit to 1KB second or something like that. After all even if Valve did decide to implement your idea it's going to be months before it makes it into the client. So in the meantime utilizing the bandwidth limiter is going to be as reasonable a plan B as anything.

[Mortimer]

Originally posted by nullable:

Mobile connections aren't necessarily metered. Ultimately if you have extra special and complicated circumstances, it's probably your job to administer that.

If you're not going to remember to shut Steam down when not in use, you should probably make the bandwidth limit to 1KB second or something like that. After all even if Valve did decide to implement your idea it's going to be months before it makes it into the client. So in the meantime utilizing the bandwidth limiter is going to be as reasonable a plan B as anything.

Would it bother you if you had to manually resume steam downloads after logging in from abroad over international roaming?

Well, to me, it's not a problem to click the "Resume" button when the download is covered by my subscription. However, I do not want Steam to use the data that's not covered by my subscription.

[Satoru]

That makes no sense since basically it has no way to know a connection is 'metered' just by the hostname. Hell iphone tetherings uses the phone's name.

Home routers frequently use 5G in their names to designate the 5GHz spectrum for their wifi names.

Your own critiera would break nearly every home router in existence

[HikariLight]

Using your phone as your Internet connection for your computer is not a good idea.
The amount of bandwidth that a computer uses for online needs is far more than what most phones can truly handle.

[TBS AlexDK]

Originally posted by Satoru:

That makes no sense since basically it has no way to know a connection is 'metered' just by the hostname. Hell iphone tetherings uses the phone's name.

Home routers frequently use 5G in their names to designate the 5GHz spectrum for their wifi names.

Your own critiera would break nearly every home router in existence

They could simply add an option, for you to mark your connection as a metered connection, just like you can do that in Windows

Originally posted by HikariLight:

Using your phone as your Internet connection for your computer is not a good idea.
The amount of bandwidth that a computer uses for online needs is far more than what most phones can truly handle.

After spending just about the last 4 years of my life in Greece, you would be surprised of how often the mobile internet is far superior to the connection a lot apartments have ( not living in the high end of Greece )

[marcgtsr]

Originally posted by Satoru:

That makes no sense since basically it has no way to know a connection is 'metered' just by the hostname. Hell iphone tetherings uses the phone's name.

Home routers frequently use 5G in their names to designate the 5GHz spectrum for their wifi names.

Your own critiera would break nearly every home router in existence

Yes steam can know, you can mark the connection as limited on windows.
That feature is literally for this use, so windows does not download updates on mobile connections, I imagine that steam could check this with the operation system. Pretty simple solution!

[AtheistChris]

change in your games only update when the game is launched
then start steam without internet connection start a game and then connect your computer to your mobile hotspot

however if the update started i don´t think you can use this method?

[nullable]

Originally posted by marcgtsr:

Originally posted by Satoru:

That makes no sense since basically it has no way to know a connection is 'metered' just by the hostname. Hell iphone tetherings uses the phone's name.

Home routers frequently use 5G in their names to designate the 5GHz spectrum for their wifi names.

Your own critiera would break nearly every home router in existence

Yes steam can know, you can mark the connection as limited on windows.
That feature is literally for this use, so windows does not download updates on mobile connections, I imagine that steam could check this with the operation system. Pretty simple solution!

Or you can use the bandwidth limiter in the meantime. Not saying Valve can't read from this windows setting, but what should a user do in the interim between now and that update?

The other caveat is the user still has to manage that Windows setting appropriately and some people won't and will expect Valve to magically do it for them, which is kind of what OP wants.

[Shinoskay]

Originally posted by Björn:

Steam tends to update games and resume unfinished downloads as soon as it connects to the Internet, without even letting the user know.

The thing is mobile connections get quite fast these days, so you may run out of your subscription gigabytes and get billed for the excess in a very short time.

My suggestion is that the Steam client does not automatically download updates or resume unfinished downloads if the connection appears to be mobile (ie. "mobile" "gprs" "3g" "4g" "5g" "lte" keywords in hostname) unless the download has been manually resumed or initiated in that network.

agreed

[KastarTroy]

Seriously why the hell isnt this implemented yet? This windows feature has been there for years, so many posts coming up in a google search relating to this.

Come on valve.. this is basic ♥♥♥♥...

Check for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ metered connection flag before you resume downloads already..

[Midnight Aurais]

have you guys ever considered maybe going to options>downloads>schedule auto updates and set that to like night time when you aren't even using the pc? that effectively stops updating so you can update manually

[traycerb]

Steam is forever updating itself and games, and on my laptop when using my hotspot (marked as a metered connection in Windows) I never want that. Steam just monopolizes the bandwidth, and makes my other online apps unworkably slow.

I struggle to diagnose the issue, until I notice a massive download on my bandwidth monitor, then go to the Task Manager, and sort by Processes, only to find that Steam is the culprit.

So I add my voice to the above chorus requesting this change, knowing it will be ignored like the others.

It wouldn't be so bad, if I could set Steam to exit when I 'X" out of it (instead of minimize to the notification tray as a background process), which would be the preferred behavior on my laptop. But even that has been requested many times, and ignored equally many times.

there are many workarounds (limiting bandwidth, scheduling updates), and many people bafflingly eager to defend Steam's behavior, saying "it's not that hard to just exit out," etc, but these are suboptimal solutions.

I imagine Valve's only response to both of these requests will be to lock the thread, "because it's quite old," instead of actually considering the issue. Valve employee, now your turn: lock away!!

[Eli]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.