Regain Control of Your Steam Library and Keep It Organized

You’ve just bought all those games from the Steam Summer Sale, and you still have that backlog of games from the Winter Sale yet to play. Thankfully, organizing your games is easy to do in Steam, and if you’ve got a lot of new games, you might be running out of disk space as well. Steam offers ways to install specific games to different directories, or lets you move your entire Steam directory to another drive without having to re-download all your games again.

These suggestions and tips will allow you to spend more time gaming, and less juggling disk space and inefficient organization.

How to view your Steam games: Detail, List or Grid view

I have over 1,500 games on Steam now. That wasn’t always the case, but early on I had started to organize what I owned. If I didn’t place my games into categories years ago, it would be near impossible to sift through now. Your organization should start sooner than later, so whether you have five, twenty-five, or 100 games, it’s time to get started now.

In Steam, there are three ways to view your games: Detail, List, or Grid view. Starting with the last one mentioned, Grid view lets you see your games in a banner-style view;

How to view your Steam games Grid view

Detail view lets you see your game and see if it is favorited, has Steam Cloud support, what its Metacritic score is, and when it was last played;

How to view your Steam games Detail view

List view, is the default and most popular view where you see the categories most prominently.

How to view your Steam games List view

How to set up Categories in Steam

To really organize your games the fastest, view them in List view. It is here you can right-click a game and click on “Set Categories…”

This is where you can create a category, and then check the box. You can use any descriptive name that makes sense to you and how you think about your games, and you can add as many categories as you want or need.

Favorites is another category type that comes with Steam; everything else you add is a custom one to let you sort the way you want.

Here are the categories I’m using and have used for several years:

  • Beaten: Games I’ve completed to story completion
  • Infinite: Games that have no definable ending
  • Multiplayer: Games that are multiplayer only, and have no story mode
  • Unbeaten: Games I have yet to start or complete

 

How to set up Categories in Steam

How to install Steam games to specific directories

1. Navigate to your Steam client “Settings” menu.

2. Select “Steam Library Folders” from the “Downloads” tab.

3. From here, you can view your default installation path, as well as creating a new path by selecting “Add Library Folder.”

How to install Steam games to specific directories

4. Once you have created the new path, all future installations can be installed there.

5. You can right-click on one of the paths to set it as a default.

How to move your Steam installation to another drive

1. Exit the Steam client application.

2. Browse to the Steam installation folder for the Steam installation you would like to move (C:\Program Files\Steam by default).

How to move your Steam installation to another drive

3. Delete all of the files and folders except the SteamApps & Userdata folders and Steam.exe

4. Cut and paste the whole Steam folder to the new location, for example: D:\Games\Steam\

5. Launch Steam and log into your account.

Steam continues to evolve, both as a platform that’s releasing more and more games each year, and as an application to help you better manage your games. Take advantage of the tools available to make your PC gaming experience as smooth and as efficient as possible.

Scott Ellison II is a popular reviewer of the latest video games and Editor-in-Chief at SavingContent.com. You can follow him on Twitter @hawk_se and catch his gaming on his Twitch.tv channel.

Besides Seagate internal and external hard drives, Scott’s gear includes:

  • CPU: Intel Core i7 6700k @ 4.6GHz (OC)
  • Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
  • RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
  • Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW

 

2018-02-07T17:20:39+00:00

About the Author:

Scott Ellison II
Scott Ellison II is a popular reviewer of the latest video games and Editor-in-Chief at SavingContent.com. You can follow him on Twitter @hawk_se and catch his gaming on his Twitch.tv channel at hawkse.