Provide a setting to prevent Steam from setting your status to "away"

[Scutterman]

Since most of my friends use Steam chat as their main messenger, I usually keep Steam open in the background while I'm on my computer.

Sometimes I'm watching a Youtube video, reading a long article, or doing something else that doesn't involve moving the mouse, but I'm still free to talk. This means that people may think I'm away when I'm actually available.

It would be good to have an option to disable the "auto away" feature, so that I can control my status manually.

[Black Blade]

well ya i understand and some what agree to these
For now il say maybe try to make a non-steam game note pad and call it something like here, or what ever status you like (I am Awesome) then it will show you as playing it and your friends will know you are online

[Scutterman]

That's a good idea, and one I hadn't thought of, but it's very much a hack. It will still show me as ingame, which will still make people unsure of whether I'm available to chat.

[Satoru]

I think a timer field would be useful. At least then you coudl set the timeout to like 10 minutes or something.

[Scutterman]

That would be perfect. I think WLM used to have this, and I would set it to 1440 minutes for a whole day.

[Black Blade]

I am not saying it as a way to do it... just for now a small fix up to when Valve take the time to do it

[Hexo]

I can't believe how old messaging programs from the 90's had this feature, and here almost 20 years later Steam doesn't allow us the option of changing the auto-away settings :/

Just because I don't move my mouse for x couple of minutes doesn't mean I'm away, I could be reading something on the screen. An option to change auto-away settings would be most welcome.