About

SteamEdit is a small tool for editing some information about your game collection in Steam. You can only change information stored locally – changes you make will not be visible elsewhere.

Turn this:

Before: Ugly inconsistent names, wrong ordering

Into this:

After: Much nicer, sorted correctly

What can I change?

The following modifications are currently possible:

  • Game name
  • Sort-by name
  • Launch menu
  • ‘Completed’ and ‘Hidden’ tags

For more details, see the How to use section.

Get It

The latest version can be downloaded here. Simply unzip it to a destination of your choosing. You can move it any time, by default everything it needs will be put in the same place.

SteamEdit requires a Windows PC, with .NET Framework 4.5 installed.

Download v1.3.6!

SteamEdit contains an auto-updater, and by default will check for updates each time you run it.

Release Notes

v1.3.6 - July 6, 2024

  • Fixed issues:
    • … Fix crash on saving mods that might have been broken by the last bunch of updates…

v1.3.5 - July 6, 2024

  • Fixed issues:
    • Maybe this one’s okay? Fixed crash when loading mods that were made with 1.3.31.3.4, but with appinfo prior to 0x07564429. Or something.

v1.3.4 - July 5, 2024

  • Fixed issues:
    • Hopefully fixed crash on reverting modifications made after previous update. Those mods can’t be cleanly reverted, but SteamEdit should offer to just remove the entry and let Steam refresh it on the next launch.

v1.3.3 - June 30, 2024

  • What’s new:
    • Add support for appinfo.vdf 0x07564429, from new Beta client
    • Add support for “passthrough” command line arguments. If -- is found of the SteamEdit command line, everything after it will be ignored by SteamEdit and instead passed through when launching Steam.
  • Fixed issues:
    • Improved the error message shown when a new appinfo.vdf version comes along.
    • SteamEdit should no longer show an error message if it fails to check for updates (for example, if it has no internet connection). It will only be written to the log, and be less intrusive.
    • When skipping an “Updates are ready to install” prompt, the SteamEdit main window should now come to focus.
    • Fixed an issue where SteamEdit could crash on ‘OverflowException’.

v1.3.2 - March 12, 2023

  • Fixed issues:
    • Fixed error when trying to Revert a modified entry.

v1.3.1 - December 10, 2022

  • What’s new:
    • Add support for appinfo.vdf 0x07564428, introduced in Beta client
    • Add ‘beta’ filter.
  • Fixed issues:
    • Check for updates earlier in application startup, so an error reading appinfo doesn’t prevent updating.

v1.3 - June 14, 2020

  • What’s new:
    • Add ‘-silent’ command line argument, so start Steam in the background.
    • Add music filter, can contain game soundtracks.
  • Fixed issues:
    • Some games with localized names would not show their edits in Steam.

v1.2 - December 22, 2019

  • What’s new:
    • Option to remove games from Steam’s built-in VR category.
    • Ability to set location of appinfo.vdf file, in case SteamEdit can’t find it.
    • Remember position and size of main window.
  • Fixed issues:
    • When app selection dropdown is open, PgUp/PgDn should scroll in pages, instead of moving by single items.
  • Known issues:
    • UI doesn’t look great at high DPI settings.
    • Sometimes after manually typing text into the Games list textbox, it can remain selected when returning focus to the list textbox. Can make it difficult to navigate games normally again.
    • If two games have the same name, selecting one of those two can be difficult.
    • When rearranging launch items, if the first item (the one with greyed out title) is moved down, it stays greyed out and the new top does not get a default title.
    • When setting a new executable for a launch item, it might not be relative to the correct install folder, if the game is installed somewhere other than the default “Program Files\Steam\steamapps” location.
    • Sorting in Games list might not match Steam’s sorting in all cases.

v1.1.2 - August 2, 2018

  • Hotfix release
    • Fix bug where clearing a game’s name would result in it not being visible in SteamEdit anymore.

v1.1.1 - June 24, 2017

  • Hotfix release
    • Users were reporting crashes at startup and when saving changes. I wasn’t able to reproduce the problem, but this release should help in the situations I know of.

v1.1 - May 28, 2017

  • What’s new:
    • Filters for different types of entries. Instead of just seeing games can now see games, applications, videos, and more.
    • Expose “controller support” setting.
    • Batch operation for “controller support”, to change all games from a specific setting to a different one.
    • “autofix” command has “-forcestart” option, to start steam even if it isn’t already running.
  • Fixed issues:
    • Possible case where edited “launch” items could end up in wrong order.
  • Known issues:
    • UI doesn’t look great at high DPI settings.
    • Sometimes after manually typing text into the Games list textbox, it can remain selected when returning focus to the list textbox. Can make it difficult to navigate games normally again.
    • If two games have the same name, selecting one of those two can be difficult.
    • When rearranging launch items, if the first item (the one with greyed out title) is moved down, it stays greyed out and the new top does not get a default title.
    • When setting a new executable for a launch item, it might not be relative to the correct install folder, if the game is installed somewhere other than the default “Program Files\Steam\steamapps” location.

v1.0 - May 13, 2017

  • Initial release
  • Supports appinfo.vdf 0x07564427 (Introduced early January 2017).
  • Known issues:
    • UI doesn’t look great at high DPI settings.
    • Sometimes after manually typing text into the Games list textbox, it can remain selected when returning focus to the list textbox. Can make it difficult to navigate games normally again.

How to Use


Game List

In the main SteamEdit window, you can see a drop-down list of all known games (and other things), and select one to edit. An entry is bolded if it has been modified. It will have a strikethrough if it has been hidden. Three icons on the right side of the list can give more details.

  • It has been modified in some way (rename, launches, hidden, etc).
  • It has been marked completed.
  • It has been marked hidden.

You can also use the PgUp and PgDown keys at any time to switch between apps in the app list.

Game List Filter

To the right of the app list, there are several buttons to toggle which types of things should be shown in the game list.

  • Game
  • Application
  • Video
  • Music
  • Guide
  • DLC
  • Demo
  • Tool
  • Config *
  • Beta *
  • Unknown **

* Don’t really know what this is, but stuff shows up under it, so I’ve included the filter.
** There shouldn’t generally be anything under Unknown, but if something has a type that I don’t know of, it would go here.

Game Name

You can change the game’s Name, which is what Steam will show in the games list and the game information panel.

Sort As

You can also change the game’s Sort As, which Steam will use when putting the games list in order. If the Sort As appears in grey, then there is nothing specific set, and it will use the game’s Name instead.

Controller Support

Each game has a ‘controller support’ setting, which is used in Big Picture mode, for the ‘Control Supported’ filter. Set to ‘full’ to make the game show up in that filter.

Setting this to ‘full’ also seems to disable the “Controller Configuration Required” prompt that appears with some games.

Controller Support Batch

This allows a batch operation over all known games (and other things), to change controller support from one value to another. Use with care, it can end up changing a lot games!

Hidden

When ‘Hidden’ is checked, and ‘Enable “Hidden”’ is enabled in the settings, the game will be modified in a way that will prevent Steam from showing it. This is largely a legacy feature, from before Steam had built-in support for hiding games, but may still be useful to give a second layer of hiding.

Completed

When ‘Completed’ is checked, and ‘Enable “Completed”’ is enabled in the settings, the game’s name will have a checkmark appended on it, which can give an immediate indicator whether you have finished the game or not. Again, this is initially from before Steam’s Category support, but may still be useful.

Revert

The Revert button will put the game back to its original state, removing any modifications you have made.

Save

After making changes to your games, the Save button will both save a mods.dat file for SteamEdit (to remember what changes you’ve made), as well as apply the changes to Steam’s appinfo.vdf file. You will need to restart Steam in order for any changes to be visible.

Save & Refresh

Same as Save, except it will also restart Steam if needed, to make the changes appear there.

Launch Editor

The Launch Editor is an experimental feature allowing you to change the launch menus that come up in some games (or even add one if you want).

If there is only a single item in the list, then Steam will not show any menu, and will run whatever is in the “Executable” field on play.

When there are multiple items, Steam will show a launch menu on play, instead of going directly into the game. The first button’s label is fixed and cannot be changed. Any other button can be customized.

The ‘Copy’ button allows you to copy a launch item from another game into the current one. This may be useful for being able to run multiple games from a single one.

You can delete any items you don’t want. If you delete all but the first, then Steam will no longer show the menu.

Autofix

SteamEdit has two modes which allow it to run quickly without showing the main window, to simply re-apply the changes you have already made (in case Steam refreshes some game). These are easiest to access through a Windows Shortcut, but could also be done in a batch script, or some other method of running an application with additional commandline arguments.

autofix
By adding -autofix to the commandline, as shown below, SteamEdit will silently apply your changes to Steam’s data. If Steam is running, and there were changes that need to be applied, then SteamEdit will restart it, so that the changes can be fully applied. If Steam is not running, the changes are simply made. If there were no changes required (all your changes are already applied), then nothing happens.
forcestart
By putting both -autofix and -forcestart on the commandline, as below, SteamEdit will apply your changes, and ensure Steam is running afterwards. If Steam is already running, and there are changes to be applied, it will be restarted. If Steam is running, and there are no changes to be applied, Steam will be opened and brought to focus (similar to launching a Steam shortcut while it’s running). If Steam is not running, whether changes need to be applied or not, it will be started. This could be used as a shortcut for opening Steam, ensuring that your library is in the shape you want it in.
silent
Combinding the above options with -silent will operate as before, but will start Steam in “silent” mode, where it will run in the background without showing the main window. This can be useful as a startup task when Windows boots up, or something.

Pass-through command line arguments

When using SteamEdit to launch Steam, you may wish to pass along additional arguments to Steam. In order to make this possible, without adding every possible argument into SteamEdit, it supports a simple method to pass through any command line arguments you wish. Simply add -- to the SteamEdit command line, and then anything appearing after that will be ignored by SteamEdit and used only when launching Steam.

For example:

If SteamEdit launches Steam in this setup, Steam will run with its dev console available.

Contact

SteamEdit is semi-actively developed by Tim Green. If you would like to request a new feature, or report a bug, please send an email to tim@tg-software.com.

I can’t promise to follow up on everything, but I’ll try to take things into account when introducing new things.