Turn off automatic updates for all games - Button

[0xyg3n.hac{se}]

A simple option that allows for the disabling of automatic updates across your account and libraries. This has been ask for forum posts on forum posts, but since steam support made me go here, ill make a post. With your own steam deck, you are killing the ability to have games installed. Updates literally break space when they're auto updated, causing corruption and all sorts of issues. For me to have to manually turn this off for every game, on every platform, is an insane ask.

Please. For the love of god Valve, add this feature.

[Amaterasu]

Here we go with another one of the weekly posts. Steam really needs a FAQ to stop these. The answer is no.

[William Shakesman]

For EVERY game? I could see it for certain games with mods or incompetent or malicious developers which is a growing space these days sadly, but EVERY game? I have a Deck and I have no such issues with the update schema as is. Break space and corruption? I do not understand what you mean here.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by 0xyg3n.hac{se}:

A simple option that allows for the disabling of automatic updates across your account and libraries. This has been ask for forum posts on forum posts,

Yes and has been answered for forums posts on forums posts.

[William Shakesman]

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Originally posted by 0xyg3n.hac{se}:

A simple option that allows for the disabling of automatic updates across your account and libraries. This has been ask for forum posts on forum posts,

Yes and has been answered for forums posts on forums posts.

Not really. Valve has never given an answer on this.

[0xyg3n.hac{se}]

Several reasons, kiddos:

Steam deck:
-Limited Space on cards, and when space gets limited, data gets corrupted. Updates wont stop until the drive has 0 space.
-Data caps on internet
-Keeping games on the drive, but updating them when you are ready to play

PC:
-Limited space on a main drive can cause OS corruption. When your 55gb Harry potter game updates and fills up your last 60gb of space on a C: drive, it will force the OS to compress and cause BSODS, Data corruption, all sorts of issues.
-Save data corruption due to compression
-Same as Steam deck issues above

And plenty more reasons. I have 200 games installed over 4 drives, unless i kept up on turning them off on every game, i have to go back to each one and turn auto updates off. Every time i launch steam, if i don't catch it, it just starts force patching. And @amaterasu, get off your high horse, act like an adult and don't patronize. I don't sit on these forums all day long like you. Support made me go here and told me to post, so I did.

[William Shakesman]

Originally posted by 0xyg3n.hac{se}:

Several reasons, kiddos:

Steam deck:
-Limited Space on cards, and when space gets limited, data gets corrupted. Updates wont stop until the drive has 0 space.
-Data caps on internet
-Keeping games on the drive, but updating them when you are ready to play

PC:
-Limited space on a main drive can cause OS corruption. When your 55gb Harry potter game updates and fills up your last 60gb of space on a C: drive, it will force the OS to compress and cause BSODS, Data corruption, all sorts of issues.
-Save data corruption due to compression
-Same as Steam deck issues above

And plenty more reasons. I have 200 games installed over 4 drives, unless i kept up on turning them off on every game, i have to go back to each one and turn auto updates off. Every time i launch steam, if i don't catch it, it just starts force patching. And @amaterasu, get off your high horse, act like an adult and don't patronize. I don't sit on these forums all day long like you. Support made me go here and told me to post, so I did.

Support often falsely leads people here under the pretense of Valve employees reading here but they seldom read and never post here. You will never get a useful response that is not just from random users.

That said, updates being so blind to the space left on the hard drive that they will chomp it down to zero and keep going is absolutely a failure on Valves part. There is no excuse for not catching that.

On the other hand, as far as I am aware you shouldn't be running hard drives close to capacity just in the general case ignoring Steam, though I do not know the actual best practice thresholds. Updates should release the swap space they use for the patching so if they have enough extra space to complete they should be able to finish. I could be wrong but I am fairly sure it is a general recommendation to not be approaching capacity on your HDs.

I know this is hard to do on the deck given its obsession with storing TBs of shader caches without warning

[0xyg3n.hac{se}]

Over all, I don't need nor want all of my games updating on steams time. I'll do it on my time. With so many games, and multiple platforms, I cant believe a pause all updates feature isn't present on a multi "B"illion dollar software system.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by 0xyg3n.hac{se}:

Several reasons, kiddos:

Steam deck:
-Limited Space on cards, and when space gets limited, data gets corrupted. Updates wont stop until the drive has 0 space.
-Data caps on internet
-Keeping games on the drive, but updating them when you are ready to play

PC:
-Limited space on a main drive can cause OS corruption. When your 55gb Harry potter game updates and fills up your last 60gb of space on a C: drive, it will force the OS to compress and cause BSODS, Data corruption, all sorts of issues.
-Save data corruption due to compression
-Same as Steam deck issues above

And plenty more reasons. I have 200 games installed over 4 drives, unless i kept up on turning them off on every game, i have to go back to each one and turn auto updates off. Every time i launch steam, if i don't catch it, it just starts force patching. And @amaterasu, get off your high horse, act like an adult and don't patronize. I don't sit on these forums all day long like you. Support made me go here and told me to post, so I did.

Common sense would tell one to install only the games they plan on playing so games that aren't being played aren't requiring an update, yet here we are.

[76561199200109592]

wow :0

[0xyg3n.hac{se}]

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Originally posted by 0xyg3n.hac{se}:

Several reasons, kiddos:

Steam deck:
-Limited Space on cards, and when space gets limited, data gets corrupted. Updates wont stop until the drive has 0 space.
-Data caps on internet
-Keeping games on the drive, but updating them when you are ready to play

PC:
-Limited space on a main drive can cause OS corruption. When your 55gb Harry potter game updates and fills up your last 60gb of space on a C: drive, it will force the OS to compress and cause BSODS, Data corruption, all sorts of issues.
-Save data corruption due to compression
-Same as Steam deck issues above

And plenty more reasons. I have 200 games installed over 4 drives, unless i kept up on turning them off on every game, i have to go back to each one and turn auto updates off. Every time i launch steam, if i don't catch it, it just starts force patching. And @amaterasu, get off your high horse, act like an adult and don't patronize. I don't sit on these forums all day long like you. Support made me go here and told me to post, so I did.

Common sense would tell one to install only the games they plan on playing so games that aren't being played aren't requiring an update, yet here we are.

Lol common sense eh? Why are you fighting such an easy feature to be added. If I wanna pre install my games, to play them quicker when im ready, i can. This has nothing to do with the setting request. Im literally asking for the most simple request, and you are whining about my choice of installing multiple games that I PAID for. Go to sleep, grab your pillow, and go nunight little boy.

[󠀡󠀡]

Of course this option is needed , data caps are the first reason .

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Common sense would tell one to install only the games they plan on playing so games that aren't being played aren't requiring an update, yet here we are.

And games you've not played frequently get their updates scheduled anyway.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by 0xyg3n.hac{se}:

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Common sense would tell one to install only the games they plan on playing so games that aren't being played aren't requiring an update, yet here we are.

Lol common sense eh?

Yes, less games installed = less updates = common sense. The friend request is denied. Best of luck, blocked, ect.

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Common sense would tell one to install only the games they plan on playing so games that aren't being played aren't requiring an update, yet here we are.

And games you've not played frequently get their updates scheduled anyway.

This.

[KalGimpa]

Originally posted by KalCuey:
if you are comfortable editing files this will help until we get the option

Originally posted by MoonMoon:
It would be great if Steam had an option to set your default auto-update preference for newly downloaded games. However that has been asked for for years and unlikely to ever be a thing. I wasnt able to find another thread that shared this bit of info, and so it is my hope that this helps someone someday.

You cant easily change the default behavior of steam updates without some kind of scripting knowledge/tool. However you can change the setting for all of your currently installed games at the same time. All you need to do is

1. navigate to your Steam\steamapps folder. At the bottom will be a list of appmanifest_****.acf files that coincide with all of your currently installed games on that drive.
2. highlight all of the .acf files, right-click, open with Notepad++
3. Inside Notepad++ find the line that reads "AutoUpdateBehavior" "0"
4. Highlight the entire line, use ctrl-f to bring up the Find box, and go to the replace tab
5. Copy the selection in the find box and paste it into the replace box, then replace the "0" with "1"
6. Click on the button that says "Replace all on all opened documents"
7. Open the File dropdown, click save all.
8. Restart steam to finish applying the settings.

Now all of your currently installed games will not update until you launch the game or manually initiate the update. You may also update your games individually to auto-update or have high priority auto-update. Future games that you install will still need to have their update preference updated if you wish, unless you setup some script or automation to detect new game installs and modify the .acf file.

[0xyg3n.hac{se}]

Originally posted by KalCuey:

Originally posted by KalCuey:
if you are comfortable editing files this will help until we get the option

Originally posted by MoonMoon:
It would be great if Steam had an option to set your default auto-update preference for newly downloaded games. However that has been asked for for years and unlikely to ever be a thing. I wasnt able to find another thread that shared this bit of info, and so it is my hope that this helps someone someday.

You cant easily change the default behavior of steam updates without some kind of scripting knowledge/tool. However you can change the setting for all of your currently installed games at the same time. All you need to do is

1. navigate to your Steam\steamapps folder. At the bottom will be a list of appmanifest_****.acf files that coincide with all of your currently installed games on that drive.
2. highlight all of the .acf files, right-click, open with Notepad++
3. Inside Notepad++ find the line that reads "AutoUpdateBehavior" "0"
4. Highlight the entire line, use ctrl-f to bring up the Find box, and go to the replace tab
5. Copy the selection in the find box and paste it into the replace box, then replace the "0" with "1"
6. Click on the button that says "Replace all on all opened documents"
7. Open the File dropdown, click save all.
8. Restart steam to finish applying the settings.

Now all of your currently installed games will not update until you launch the game or manually initiate the update. You may also update your games individually to auto-update or have high priority auto-update. Future games that you install will still need to have their update preference updated if you wish, unless you setup some script or automation to detect new game installs and modify the .acf file.

Good stuff, thank you. Take some points, have a great day.