How to make your Steam library look fantastic

This guide will go over some basics and other tips for customizing your Steam library. The guide is not 100% complete yet with 1 section still being worked on, and possibly others to be added in the future. As for now the guide does cover customizing library art as well as custom renaming and sorting of games.

Changing Library Artwork

The first thing you'll want to do is familiarize yourself with the SteamGridDB[www.steamgriddb.com] website. This is basically a database for countless library covers that cover both the now used portrait and even the older landscape images that are still used when looking at the first game in your "Recent games" library shelf. It also houses an assortment of library banners (called heroes on the site) and game logos.

All of these can be used on Steam for your personal use in changing the way your library looks.

There are 2 ways to go about this.

1.) Set up the SGDBboop tool as seen here, complete with instructions.[www.steamgriddb.com] For games you own on Steam this is honestly the recommended way to do this. Once it's set up it's a huge time saver, and really just a 1 click process afterwards.

2.) You can do this manually. Manual setup for library, banner and logo art is required if it is a non-steam game being added to your library as well. There are a couple of ways to do this for library covers and really only 1 way for banners and logos.

• For library covers you just look for the cover in your library and right click on it, select manage, and then set custom artwork. This will bring up your file explorer in which you will search for an image to use.
  
  
• You can also do the same thing underneath the banner if you selected a game. There will be a series of buttons with a cogwheel, an "i" and a star in the lower right of the banner. Click on the i to show more details.
  
  Then you'll see some details about the game underneath the banner section including the library cover. You can simply just right click the cover and set custom artwork here. Pretty simple!
  
  
• For banners and logos the process is similar. Jusr right click in the banner area and you have 3 options. 1 for changing the banner (or background as it will be called), 1 for changing the logo, and also 1 for adjusting the size and position of the logo.
  
  Adjust, set and profit.

Examples:

Library cover

Before:


After:

Game banner

Before:


After:

Go nuts with this! Use your imagination. Make good use of SteamGridDB for ideas. Or just make your own!




One last bit of info about custom library art. You can actually use animated images. Same thing for banners and logos. I don't recommend this however for slower computers, so use at your own risk as it is a drain on resources and can cause your library to scroll slower. Images used must be in the .png format. Gifs will not work! You can simply just edit the file extension for gifs to png though to make them work.

Custom Sorting and Renaming Games

Steam as of right now has no way built in to rename titles (aside from Non-Steam games). And also, there is no custom sorting option. Honestly a little bummed on this since other clients allow for these seemingly basic features.

However, there is a tool that allows you to do these 2 things.

It's simply called SteamEdit.[steamedit.tg-software.com]. SteamEdit is a super lightweight program that allows you custom sort games in any order you wish as well as even renaming the titles if you so wish.

Below is a list of things to focus on in the SteamEdit software:

• 1.) This box is used for searching for the game you wish to edit
  
• 2.) This box allows you to change the name of the game as it would appear on Steam. this only affects the user and nobody else.
  
• 3.) This box allows you to change the sorting name. It's done alphabetically and numerically. It sorts from 0 - 9 when using numbers. If you add a 10 after the title if will sort it after 1 and before 2. Not after 9. Make use of decimals if the game list is for example a franchise of more than 10 games.
  
• 4.) This allows you to save your work but does not save it to Steam yet. You'll want to use this after every game you edit if working on multiple titles.
  
• 5.) This will save your work and also closes and restarts Steam to make the changes take effect within Steam.
  
• 6.) This allows you to revert a games name and sorting info back to the original.

*****Changes are not permanently saved unfortunately and may revert back to their original state after a few Steam restarts or during client updates. It's easy to reload them back though just by re-opening SteamEdit and using Save & Refresh*****

Name change

Before:


After:


Resident Evil: Resistance changed from all caps to normal to match the other Resident Evil titles.

Sorting

Before:


After:


Resident Evil 1 and 0 now in the correct order, as well as some other sorting for the Revelations spinoffs and other titles after using SteamEdit to sort.

Will SteamEdit get me in trouble?

Absolutely not! And also 100% safe to use. It's a good alternative while we wait another 10 or so years for maybe Valve to finally add in this feature.

Hiding Games vs. Making Them Private

2 things you can do with games you own is the ability to hide them and also to make them private. Why you decide to do this is entirely up to you. This is more or less to tell you what these 2 features instead do and how they are different.

When you hide a game, you are basically removing it from your main library. It remains in your library but is actually hidden from you. You can unhide games easily enough if you made a mistake on one. Anyone who views your public library from your profile will still see these hidden games if your library is set to public.

When you make a game Private it remains in your main library but will be hidden from your public library entirely. In effect this means you cannot display things such as achievements or other community related stuff for the game on your profile in relation to the game that is marked as private. It also affects your games owned count on your profile.

The hidden games feature is great for people with larger libraries who typically buy bundles that might be loaded with trash games, or also a way to hide things like demos, or just games you have no interest in seeing in your library but don't want to remove completely. Really use it any way you want.

Hidden games tutorial

How to hide a game

• Find the game you want to hide
  
• Right click it in your library and scroll down to manage and then select "Hide this game"

How to access your Hidden games library

• At the top of Steam click on "View" and then select "Hidden Games"
  

If you want to go back to your regular library do the same thing but instead select "Library".

How to unhide a game

• Access your hidden library like shown above and navigate to the game you want to unhide.
  
• Right click on the game and scroll to "manage" and then select "Remove from Hidden"
  

Private games tutorial

This is basically the same process as above for hidden games, but instead you will select "Mark as Private" to make them private and "Unmark as Private" to un-private them. However, when they are marked as private, they will remain in your main library.

Adding Non-Steam Games to Your Library

This section to be updated soon.

Things I will be covering when finished:

• Adding non-steam games
  
• How to rename those games
  
• How to make dos-box and scummvm games launch properly
  
• How to add overlay support for dos-box and scummvm games
  
• How to add Microsoft UWP games
  
• and more...

This section will be updated in full within a couple of days when I get some time.