"Start Minimized on Boot" GUI option is missing #5806
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Hello @Yowlen, running |
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Okay, that works, but the functionality should still match the Windows client. The Windows client has this option in the GUI, so the Linux one should too. |
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Okay. I take it back. It worked for literally one reboot. Steam actually reset the |
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Can you try adjusting |
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I edited the config one again just to see what would happen and it seems to be sticking now. I think the other one had to do with an issue I was experiencing with a malfunctioning game which prevented me from closing Steam, forcing me to reboot without letting Steam shut down properly. I guess the crash recovery routine resets everything - including the startup thing. So the first workaround does work, but this still needs to be put as a proper option within the GUI. |
This is what I do, and I have the file in version control. But Steam keeps overwriting it:
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Just to be clear, I figured out why it resets. Whenever a client update is released, the This makes it impossible to use this workaround anymore unless I were to back out of the beta program and essentially forfeit my ability to test other issues I'm currently vested in getting fixed. |
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Yeah, either Steam or the user modifies that @kisak-valve: another angle for this:
Additionally maybe just add a toggleable GUI option that is used as default when no |
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There's no reason a user should have to do any of that, though. Any startup options should be toggleable in the GUI, barring an emergency debug command line option or whatever. No hacky workarounds, no command line unless absolutely necessary. We need to start holding Linux's user-friendliness to the same standards as Windows if we ever hope to have Linux not be an outlier in the desktop/laptop OS market. Steam is pushing their Linux-based SteamOS, so I would hope that they understand this necessity. The Windows version has this option in the GUI, so the Linux version should have it too. That's all there is to it. |
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This still seems to be an open issue, a very much appreciated one! Please add it soon. |
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There should be a GUI option to start Steam minimised on startup, just like the Windows client. |
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Which is why this issue is still open. It's not that hard to add, either. They would only need to add logic to the autostart shortcut creation subroutine to add the I have no idea how to do GUI stuff, but even with my own limited skillset, I can make a bash script that can toggle this at will, so unless the GUI change is really that hard, or there's another piece of Steam's code that's getting in the way somewhere, it's no more than a 5 minute fix. |
Yowlen
changed the title
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Yeah, its pretty annoying to have to edit the |
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Is there any motion on this issue? |
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Is there any movement on this issue? |
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In case steam developers stay LAZY to add this, one might consider creating a CRON job that runs every min to check and add the option back to the USER CONFIG desktop file... That cronjob could run a script that uses |
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Thanks for the suggestions how to work around this issue. Let me share the non-interactive command to apply the workaround (as suggested by @TriMoon). |
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I want't to add to this that I have been monitoring the power consumption of my NVIDIA graphics card. When Steam is NOT minimized the card consumes about 31 Watt (as measured by the driver) and the clocks stay very active. When Steam minimizes power goes down to 8 Watt and the clock frequency drops to 400 Mhz on my card. To conclude, while you are working on your desktop it is best to keep Steam minimized to the tray on not have the window open. |
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@cminnoy That's because it has a browser window process active when shown, which ofcourse has javascript running... |
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Maybe so.
Large Window Mode and Big Picture mode have similar power consumption issues, even you go to your games library, which is just a bunch of icons.
If you select just one game, then the power goes back to normal. So you may be right.
Small Window Mode doesn’t have the issue, neither when you minimise Steam or close it to tray.
As a side note there is another issue with big picture mode:
When I use a Windows client and open there big picture mode, then select a game to stream from my Linux host, Steam on the host stays in big picture mode even after closing the game on the client. And as Steam consumes quite a bit of power extra in big picture mode, your game machine might be not so power efficient when idle.
We may wonder why Steam on the host switches to big picture at all when you stream to a Windows/Linux client, as it serves no purpose at that time I think.
Only using SteamLink as client it has a purpose, as then you get to see the Steam screen of the host on the client.
Van: ©TriMoon™ [mailto:notifications@github.com]
Verzonden: dinsdag 28 januari 2020 11:16
Aan: ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux <steam-for-linux@noreply.github.com>
CC: cminnoy <chris.minnoy@skynet.be>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com>
Onderwerp: Re: [ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux] "Start Minimized on Boot" GUI option is missing (#5806)
@cminnoy <https://github.com/cminnoy> That's because it has a browser window process active when shown, which ofcourse has javascript running...
More reason to start it minimized on startup 😉
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Can't you just copy the |
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Why would I not use the GUI? I can't install new games from Firefox, and updating to the latest GloriousEggroll Proton version on each new release so that music and stuff works in Warframe (among other things that get messed up due to official Proton versions not compiling FAudio with ffmpeg support) requires going into the GUI to change it. There's a multitude of reasons to want to use the GUI but not have it pop up when you boot up the system, so that workaround is likely only gonna work for a select few people. We need proper "Start Minimized on Boot" support, including a GUI checkbox. There's no reason the Linux version shouldn't have the same features as the Windows version. |
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I meant, not use the GUI to set Steam to start on boot minimized. As a workaround. Until Valve has fixed this. |
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But that's the whole problem. There's no GUI option for any of this in the first place. Adding the And honestly, devs that make Linux apps have a bad habit of taking any "workarounds" that actually work and making it the official "solution" just to avoid having to implement it properly in their own code. So leave the workarounds out of it. I don't wanna risk another bug report getting closed because the workaround was deemed "good enough". I've had more than enough of that from the DXVK devs, among others. Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying Steam's Linux devs are like that. I'm just saying I don't wanna risk it. |
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It's a hack but setting the .desktop owner to root might do the job making it non-writable. |
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I repeat, THIS IS A HACK but it fixed the problem for me!! :D
in my system it adds the options from |
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I will say that adding the Still need the GUI option, ofc, but this has been working for me for a month or two now. |
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Disable the option within Steam "Run when my computer starts" then manually add the Yes, Steam will also execute if you make a manual autostart and as far as I see, will not rewrite it if the option is disabled to continually monitor and remake it within Steam. You can also be extra sure and just give the autostart a different name, like I did. I don't make sense of how Steam would detect such a 'rogue' autostart with a different name and delete it. |
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This is every annoying. It should just be added to the code rather than asking Linux users to manually run periodic jobs that update the desktop shortcut. There should be a preference that gets saved to disk, as well as code that reads it at startup and decides whether to show the main window or not. |
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Will this option ever be added to the Linux client? Its simple enough to add, the "-silent" argument just has to be included in the steam.desktop file when the option is enabled. |
Works - Will have to wait and see if it persists after updates which it seems it should. Shameful that this is still an issue in January 2021, years after it was initially raised given how simple of a fix it must be to implement. |
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using that hack as well, thanks qaron84, but it will be nice when there's a checkbox to add -silent |
2. create a file inside /home/user/.config/autostart/SteamSilent.desktop with the following contents:
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For me, adding the |
Works for me on Arch, the key is Line 30 in qaron84's contents of SteamSilent.desktop:
Directly having that is the only change needed in the original |
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Also worth re-mentioning that Steam can potentially overwrite But again, all of this could be solved once and for all if Steam simply added a GUI option to set the flag for us. 3 years without such a simple fix for a feature parity issue is a very strange thing to see. If people up above can write scripts for it, it can't be that much harder to implement it into Steam itself. If Steam for Windows doesn't bother us with the window on bootup, neither should Steam for Linux. >.> |
The Steam client is not open source and Valve does not take PRs to improve it. This repository is only for tracking issues, and contains no source code. Steam is not exactly free either; Valve gets 30 % cut of sales, which can be used to support and develop the software that gets them paying customers in the first place. This issue has a lot of subscribers, so let's stay on topic and focus on workarounds to this issue until it's properly fixed. The UI option "[x] Run Steam when my computer starts" creates
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Why is this still an issue? It seems like this would take the absolute minimum effort for Valve to resolve. It has been 3 years! |
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@ kisak-valve |
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Add the GUI option! |
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There's a start steam in big picture mode option, but no start steam minimized option. What the heck? |
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It's 2022 now, the problem still exists. |
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Yes, please add a gui option for this, or at least a config parameter we can set somewhere without modifying the shortcut. |
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People have suggested a cron job but instead I just created a script (if you want to call these two lines a script) and added that to my startup processes so that steam can't tell there is an entry for it. I named it steam_silent.sh, made it executable, then added it to my Startup Application Preferences. Now Steam does not magically mark 'Run Steam when my computer starts' in settings upon detecting an entry for the command 'steam'. Here you go Valve, I submit these two lines of code as a PR. |
This PR may also fix several other bugs related to starting on boot, and streamline the process. |
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Please fix this. It's such a trivial change and would be so pleasant for the users. Incorporate the Tired of huge steam window popping up every boot. Nice to have it running in the background but I don't want to see it until I got to launch a game. |
Can also just use a different name, e.g.
This is effectively the same as creating your own You could achieve the same thing without a separate script by adding |
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UNCHECK "Run Steam when my computer starts" in the settings and put a shortcut of steam with -nochatui -nofriendsui -silent in run => shell:startup |
Oddly enough, Steam still overwrites the new shortcut anyway. I'm seriously considering to mark it read-only but who knows what might break if I do |
i haven't been fooled by an overwriting steam, who replaces my shortcut, so far. |
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I've had mine marked as read-only since it was first suggested by someone a few months after I opened this issue. Specifically, I enable the autostart option within Steam, then manually add the I haven't run into any problems in the 3+ years since doing that. Steam doesn't overwrite it or anything, and it functions as expected. I consider it probably the easiest workaround in the bunch or at least one of the easiest. I really wish Steam would fix this themselves, but at least I haven't needed to bother with it for most of the time since I opened this issue. |
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I've known about this option, and know all about the Linux filesystem, the prioritizing of folders etc of XDG. However, why does Steam requires the window to be the active window to start Big Picture Mode using the Guide button on my Logitech, that Steam considers Xbox controllers although the layout is more PS, just logical as 360s are very well supported. Any way to use |
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the silent flag no longer seems to do anything at all with the latest release. |
and others
Your system information
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
When booting, Steam starts up in the window, with no option in the Settings to start minimized. I could've sworn Steam used to behave this way at one point in Linux and I know it still behaves that way in Windows, but I can't for the life of me figure out why this functionality was removed.
The only possible explanation I can think of on my end is that I had to remove the Status Notifier Plugin on my panel due to crashes relating to a bug in another app, forcing the other app & Steam to use the legacy Notification Plugin stuff. But Steam minimizes to the Notification tray icon just fine, so I don't see why this option would not be present. Unfortunately, I can't test this without uninstalling the other app, and I can't really do that right now.
Steps for reproducing this issue:
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