Valve announced back in April that Steam was about to receive a major visual overhaul that would not just make its crazy popular platform look good but also unify the codebases between the PC, Big Picture and Steam Deck versions of Steam. The update also promised additional features.
While most of the improvements promised in the updates have been available in beta for a while now, Valve is finally releasing a full stable release on June 15. The updated client features new fonts, menu designs, and a revised notification system. Courtesy of the unified codebase, features will now be shipped across platforms, meaning PC players are finally getting access to the cloud notes feature that syncs across PCs and other Steam devices and is also available on the Steam Deck.
If you were previously annoyed by Steam notifications, those pesky little popups that show up at the worst times over a critical corner of the screen, Valve has also tried to fix that problem. Clicking the notification icon now only shows the most recent and relevant notifications, prompting users to see the full notification history instead. The dialogue text, font and colours have also been improved for better readability.
Last, the legacy Big Picture Mode is finally dead (including the command line option) as the entire Steam user base shifts to the Steam Deck interface. The update is significant, but you can still see hints of the older Steam interface, at least on PC, and that’s not bad. It improves the lacking areas without turning the platform on its head and making it unfamiliar.
The changes are also not entirely visual and seem to have a performance benefit. Not necessarily in games, but the client generally feels much more fluid and smooth to use. And that’s not just limited to Windows either. Steam now has hardware acceleration support for macOS and Linux providing better performance on those platforms as well.
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