Multiple users in one iMac

[jmpmv]

Just bought my first Steam game (Portal/Portal 2 pack) with the intention of my kids being able to play on our family iMac. After hours of research, going through Steam help info and getting very frustrated I am no closer to achieving my goal. This whole Steam setup is the most unintuitive and convoluted way to install and play a game I have ever come across. OK rant complete, maybe ;)

I can open Steam and shortcut icons to the games were installed on my desktop when I purchased and installed the game.

I was almost successful in allowing other iMac users to play the games when I stumbled onto a method that might work (this method not mentioned anywhere in help I could see). We logged into my son's Steam account from my iMac user account. Steam prompted my son to send an email to me asking for permission to share games. I started to get excited! After hours of frustration we might have finally solved this riddle. Maybe this is part of the game itself I started thinking, maybe you have to solve a complex puzzle to work out how to play the game you just bought.

I checked my email and the request from my son was there. I accepted the request. I went back to my son's iMac user account and logged into Steam using his Steam account details. No sign of Portal anywhere. I'm pretty close to asking for my money back. This is a joke.

BTW there is no menu item named "Settings" anywhere that I can see. It is constantly referred to but I can't find it anywhere.

[panzerblitzer]

Wow. Glad this thread has proven useful, even after all these years!

Teksura's posts are certainly enlightening even though the MacOS may have evolved, his posts are still useful in pointing users in the direction they need to go.

My own kids have moved on, but, glad this thread is still useful!

[Teksura]

Aww geeze reading this thread again is weird. Has it been that long? Maybe I should write an updated version because OSX has changed... More than once I think since I wrote all of that. and if people are still finding this thread on Google and relying on it to help them out...

Aww nuts I'm gonna have to update everything, aren't I? I suppose I shall do so tomorrow.

[Teksura]

It took a little bit longer to verify everything than I expected (and free time is a fleeting thing), but here we go.

Teksura původně napsal:

Method 1: External Drive

This requires an external hard drive, obviously. Each user account on your system will all reconize the drive and as such everything on the drive can be considered shared files. The trick here is to make sure your downloaded steam games are on this external hard drive.

Step 1: Open Steam and in the menu options go to Steam > Preferences > Downloads and click the "Steam Library Folders" button. This should give you a window that looks like this.

http://i.imgur.com/e3Xz2Pl.png

As you can see, I already designated a folder on my external drive for this, though i haven't moved any games. I'm presently doing so and will let you know if i have any issues as a result of this (It'll take a few hours to transfer them).

You'll want to click "Add Library Folder" and add a folder on the external Drive for your Steam games to be saved to. You will need to repeat this process for all user accounts. Any games saved in that external drive should therefore be shared between accounts.

I am attempting to move my library over to my external drive and see if simply moving the folder over causes issues, but right now I just navigated to the Steamapps folder on my local hard drive, and simply moved the Common folder to the external Hard drive. I'll let you know how that works out, because it might cause problems. I honestly don't know.

This still works as described above. I will further add to this that I have been playing all of my Steam games off of an external drive since I talked about it all those years ago, and haven't had any issues so far. However, note that Valve does not recommend saving games on an external drive, as it can potentially cause problems when you go to play them. So, if you choose to save your games on an external drive and find yourself having issues with them, your first troubleshooting step may be to move them off of the external drive.

Teksura původně napsal:

Method 2: Setting up shared Folders

This is a little more complicated but arguably a better way to do it with less work in the long run.

Start by going into your Apple Menu > System Preferences > Sharing

This menu is where you set up file sharing.

Make sure File Sharing is enabled and click the + button under the Shared Folders. Navigate to your Steam Library folder, which should be found at /Users/AccountName/Library/Application Support/Steam

Add that folder to shared folders and repeat this process for all accounts. Now the Steam Library of every user account on your system is in a Shared folder, making it visible to all other accounts.


The next step is to ensure that Steam knows where to look. Follow the same steps I showed you above with the external drive, except this time locate those Steam Library folders you set to be Shared before, and add them all. You will need to repeat this process for each User account set up on your system.


You can verify this works by navigating back to your Steam Library Folders window, and check to see if anything is listed as installed on the other locations. Obviously, if you can launch Portal then you're also set.

This also appears to work exactly as I described above all those years ago, however, as noted by Scidub, there is an easier way to do it which bypasses the need to set up your own shared folders.

Method 2: Setting up shared Folders

In Finder, navigate to /Users/Shared

The Shared folder is automatically, well, a shared folder between all users. Anything you place in that folder can be accessed by all users on the system. So what you'll want to do is create a folder in there, call it Steam or something, and then make sure Steam is set to use /Users/Shared/Steam for downloads on every account on the computer. This should bypass an awful lot of fiddling with the need to set up shared folders because you're just using the default Shared folder and everyone is saving everything to the same folder.


I'm glad people are still finding this thread and my old instructions on how to set all this up. It's pretty cool to see it's still helping people four years later.

[~$wifty Gish~]

I don't understand why people are complicating this so much. Simply use the already provided common folder that all accounts can access. Drawback: you must uninstall all games for all users.

Benefit: Moving forward the problem is permanently solved. the "Shared Items" (depending on your OS version name may vary) folder is not restricted to one user, it is accessible by all users.

Simply uninstall all of your games and then moving forward when you go to install any games make sure you choose that shared folder as the point of install. Problem solved.

What I did just to be an ichiban is I uninstalled EVERYTHING. Steam itself as well. Then when I installed steam and subsequent games I used the shared items folder for everything.

[denny’S Tradeit.gg]

nem vi

[my45acp1911]

Scidub původně napsal:

Teksura původně napsal:

Method 2: Setting up shared Folders

This is a little more complicated but arguably a better way to do it with less work in the long run.

Start by going into your Apple Menu > System Preferences > Sharing

This menu is where you set up file sharing.

Make sure File Sharing is enabled and click the + button under the Shared Folders. Navigate to your Steam Library folder, which should be found at /Users/AccountName/Library/Application Support/Steam

Add that folder to shared folders and repeat this process for all accounts. Now the Steam Library of every user account on your system is in a Shared folder, making it visible to all other accounts.


The next step is to ensure that Steam knows where to look. Follow the same steps I showed you above with the external drive, except this time locate those Steam Library folders you set to be Shared before, and add them all. You will need to repeat this process for each User account set up on your system.


You can verify this works by navigating back to your Steam Library Folders window, and check to see if anything is listed as installed on the other locations. Obviously, if you can launch Portal then you're also set.


Note that this means when you install a Steam game on 1 account it is then installed on all accounts. This is generally what you want anyway, but it will be important to make sure everyone is aware that when someone uninstalls a game, it will uninstall the game for all accounts as well.

I'm just replying to this old thread because it's the first one that comes up in a google search for this topic. In fact, it was the only one that came up that got me on the right track. I thought it would be helpful to other people with the same problem.


So, what Teksura said above sort of got mgoing in the right direction but it didn't work for me. I had to find my own way.

I couldn't share the Steam Library folder for each user with each other user. It just wouldn't let me do it. Maybe MacOS has changed since this was posted.

Anyway, here is how I resolved the issue....

Under the users folder is a folder called "Shared". By default this allows all mac users to have access to this folder. I logged into steam on my user account and created a steam library folder within this shared folder. I then went to the file sharing settings on the Mac and made sure everyobdy could read/write to this folder.

Then I cut and pasted the contents of my original steam library into this new one. I logged off and back on to steam and it did a few updates and then all my games were showing fine and working perfectly from the new folder.

At this point I switched to my sons user account on the mac and pointed his steam account to the new Steam Library folder under the shared folder.

Then on his mac account, I had to log into my steam account and activate the family share thing, authorize him as a user and then switch back to his account and do the same.

Then it worked.

Now, if I download a game on my mac account and my steam account, it shows up on his mac account under his steam account.

What a massive pain in the arse...... but it works. Hope that helps somebody.

Thank you for the update because this is exactly what I want to do, use the /Users/Shared folder for Steam. My son and I are sharing our libraries through Steam but I wanted to avoid duplicating each game on the drive.

[simplegreen]

Scidub původně napsal:

Teksura původně napsal:

Method 2: Setting up shared Folders

This is a little more complicated but arguably a better way to do it with less work in the long run.

Start by going into your Apple Menu > System Preferences > Sharing

This menu is where you set up file sharing.

Make sure File Sharing is enabled and click the + button under the Shared Folders. Navigate to your Steam Library folder, which should be found at /Users/AccountName/Library/Application Support/Steam

Add that folder to shared folders and repeat this process for all accounts. Now the Steam Library of every user account on your system is in a Shared folder, making it visible to all other accounts.


The next step is to ensure that Steam knows where to look. Follow the same steps I showed you above with the external drive, except this time locate those Steam Library folders you set to be Shared before, and add them all. You will need to repeat this process for each User account set up on your system.


You can verify this works by navigating back to your Steam Library Folders window, and check to see if anything is listed as installed on the other locations. Obviously, if you can launch Portal then you're also set.


Note that this means when you install a Steam game on 1 account it is then installed on all accounts. This is generally what you want anyway, but it will be important to make sure everyone is aware that when someone uninstalls a game, it will uninstall the game for all accounts as well.

I'm just replying to this old thread because it's the first one that comes up in a google search for this topic. In fact, it was the only one that came up that got me on the right track. I thought it would be helpful to other people with the same problem.


So, what Teksura said above sort of got mgoing in the right direction but it didn't work for me. I had to find my own way.

I couldn't share the Steam Library folder for each user with each other user. It just wouldn't let me do it. Maybe MacOS has changed since this was posted.

Anyway, here is how I resolved the issue....

Under the users folder is a folder called "Shared". By default this allows all mac users to have access to this folder. I logged into steam on my user account and created a steam library folder within this shared folder. I then went to the file sharing settings on the Mac and made sure everyobdy could read/write to this folder.

Then I cut and pasted the contents of my original steam library into this new one. I logged off and back on to steam and it did a few updates and then all my games were showing fine and working perfectly from the new folder.

At this point I switched to my sons user account on the mac and pointed his steam account to the new Steam Library folder under the shared folder.

Then on his mac account, I had to log into my steam account and activate the family share thing, authorize him as a user and then switch back to his account and do the same.

Then it worked.

Now, if I download a game on my mac account and my steam account, it shows up on his mac account under his steam account.

What a massive pain in the arse...... but it works. Hope that helps somebody.

Thanks for posting your method, it worked perfectly for me on Mac Mini M1 Big Sur. One hiccup I ran into, /Users/Shared dir had the correct permissions, but newly created folders and files wouldn't. So, I created a SteamLibrary folder in the Shared dir, then ran this command:

sudo chmod -R +a "group:staff:allow readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,list,search,add_file,add_subdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /Users/Shared/SteamLibrary

note that I used the group `staff` because all users belong to this group by default; you can use any group you want as long as they all are members