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A family member has their Steam account under the same Windows account as me, which means their installed games show up in my library and vice versa (for reasons I cannot fathom). It appears there is no setting to turn this off.

I can get around this by going to Library > My Games, which only shows my personal games. However, this makes my categories disappear! In a large library, this makes browsing my own games difficult (especially as I'm not done retagging since Steam recently deleted all my categories o_o).

So my question is this:

How do I display my library without others' libraries showing up and with the categories intact?

Making a second Windows account is technically probably a solution, but would be rather inconvenient and should be unnecessary.

Others have recommended third party tools for organizing libraries (e.g. here); perhaps it can be done there but this seems like a trivial feature to have built-in. Another potential option I suppose is to move the install location of all their games (e.g. like this)? But this seems failure prone and manual labor heavy.

Wrigglenite
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user3658307
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  • What do you mean by "my library" if not "Library -> My Games"? – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 18:57
  • @Joachim That is what I mean (?). But when I click that my categories vanish. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding. – user3658307 Jun 01 '19 at 21:40
  • So: "their installed games show up in my library", but "I can get around this by going to Library > My Games, which only shows my personal games", but those two are the same? – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 21:54
  • Can you post screenshots, alternatively? – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 21:55
  • @Joachim Yes that is exactly right. That tab only shows my games, which is nice. But it does NOT have the categories (e.g. "2D platformers") that organize my library. The default "Library" (NOT "Library > My Games", just "Library") shows the categories but ALSO others' games (I want the former without the latter). – user3658307 Jun 01 '19 at 22:00
  • I misunderstood because for me those two ('library' and 'library->games') are the exact same, and I always presumed just clicking 'library' brings one to 'library->games' by default. – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 22:02
  • My first guess is that the two of you either use the same Steam installation, or have accidentally installed Steam in the same folder. Can you check? – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 22:04
  • @Joachim No worries, it's confusing. I think "Library > Games" is the same as just "Library", but they are different than "Library > My Games". Maybe the latter only shows up in this case? Yes, we use the same Steam installation. We just use the "Change Account" button when needed. As noted in the question, installing games to a separate folder might have fixed the issue, but now doing so would require migrating everything, potentially mucking up the paths. Steam knows I don't own the game, not sure why it's UI makes library org so difficult. – user3658307 Jun 01 '19 at 22:09
  • And you both don't 'Family Share' your libraries with the other? I can imagine something going wrong there. (I don't have 'Library > My Games', so I guess that's a feature that comes with a shared Steam?) – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 22:20
  • @Joachim That's right. I can imagine that sounds odd lol. But it's quite convenient and working perfectly except for not being able to view our sorted libraries separately. We play some coop games, but aren't interested in the family share. (It's a little like this question). – user3658307 Jun 01 '19 at 22:29
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Joachim Jun 01 '19 at 22:31
  • Have a look at this post, maybe it helps. Categories seem to sync on login and logout so perhaps since you switch accounts, this sync doesn't happen? – Xander Jun 03 '19 at 08:47
  • Thanks @Xander. I definitely will backup my categories this time lol. However, the way "switching accounts" works is by logging out and logging back in. Oddly enough, my categories are there (well, the ones I added back since the deletion....), under "Library" (the default view). The issue is that they vanish under "My Games". So I guess Steam sees them in one mode but not another (??). – user3658307 Jun 03 '19 at 16:23
  • If you can be arsed, I'd file a ticket with Steam or a bug report if the option exists. Maybe they'll add it or fix it if it's broken. – Xander Jun 04 '19 at 06:36

1 Answers1

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This is a limitation based on the fact you're both logged into and have games installed to the same Steam installation. If you use separate OS-level user accounts that should fix it because you would each then have your own Steam installation, etc.

It may also be fixed by at least one of y'all moving your games to a "Steam Library Folder" outside of the default folder, but it doesn't seem like it based on what you've said and how the client is known to behave.

All that being said, yeah it does seem like it should still show categories when viewing "My Games" in a multi-user installation, and you could try contacting support but it's unlikely to get fixed reasonably soon unless there's some public outcry.

l3l_aze
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    Thanks for the answer (+1). I think para2 should probably be the right solution, especially if there was a button like "migrate games of [user] to [folder]". But given issues I've had in the past I don't want to mess with it right now lol. I'll put in a ticket when I've got a free moment. – user3658307 Aug 23 '19 at 20:52
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    No problem; I'm sorry it wasn't more definitive. Regarding your edit about moving games: that's much easier if you move the appmanifest + game install data, and this method won't leave you with problems if a game had an update that you haven't installed whereas the method you linked that includes "reinstalling" will. The appmanifest file names end with a number that is their unique Steam appid which can easily be found in their store page url. – l3l_aze Aug 23 '19 at 23:41