Steam Client Annoyance

Communities Gaming
1

I’ve been having this issue for the past few months now, I can’t really state when it started so I’m hoping somebody else knows what this is.

So randomly the Steam client will refresh, not exit but simply refresh and take focus causing my gameplay to be interrupted or basically anything else I was doing as well.

Many times it will refresh the client and then show my default Game Library page with updates to games in my library, not always but frequently it does.

I’m thinking this isn’t really the cause just happenstance.

Has anybody else seen this behavior ?

Running Windows 11 Pro with the latest build installed, running on a Samsung, 1TB, 970 Pro, nVME SSD
AMD 7950x CPU
64GB of DDR5 (Gskill, 32GB x2) running as EXPO mode 1 6000
ASUS X670E-E Gaming Wifi Mobo with the latest firmware installed
Powercolor Red Devil RX 7900 XTX GPU with the latest AMD driver build installed

Games and such run fine and surprisingly great performance within Starfield too.

I’m sure this started after my AM5 build with this GPU so not sure if this is a Steam Client issue or not but seems like it maybe.

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2

Maybe its windows 11 thing…

i have 7700x/7900xtx/64g ram system running fedora 38 and my steam client never foregrounds while i am gaming (windowed or full screen).

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3

I have windows 11… 7900x3d and a lowly 6950xt. I have not had the issue with steam, but i have disabled the overlay out of habit because it messes with some games.

I know there was also a issue with windows doing what you stated for pop up messages and theres a setting to silence them on full screen programs… or if you have the xbox game installed which is needed to get the most out of a x3d chip (something about core utilization) on windows helps to silence steam refreshes?

Just my two thoughts.

4

So am I correct in thinking this is maybe on the OS side of things and maybe related to the Xbox Game Bar service ?

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5

Maybe I disabled and uninstalled it using powershell

Seems xbox game bar is buggy

6

I’ve been having the weird refresh issue on Lubuntu, but not while gaming. If the client has been running for a while and, for instance, I want to open the friends window, sometimes it pauses, a blank white window comes up, and then the Library page shows up. It sometimes does the weird hang and refresh deal when trying to open the Library (did it right now while checking things out), and sometimes if I try to launch a game it goes through the same deal. I just assumed my old LTS install was to blame and was going to get a new drive and start fresh. it started around 2-3 months ago if that makes any difference.

I also had some weird issues that affects certain window managers like Openbox, but they have since added ‘Enable context menu focus compatibility mode’ under Interface in the settings which fixes it once enabled.

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7

I feel like it’s been a couple months since I’ve seen this but this has been an issue for me on Linux for most of this year where I’ll be playing a game, and usually if i leave it for a few minutes and come back, it’s switched out to the desktop and I have to open the game. Not sure if it’s related but I had thought it was an OS issue. Maybe it was Steam itself.

8

Are y’all enrolled in the Steam client beta perchance? I do not have this issue on Fedora of all distros, and I use the beta client.

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Nope, not enrolled in the BETA client releases.

I can state this issue happens regardless if I’m actually playing a game or doing other things like media upsampling or just plain watching a video.

10

After some playing around, the Openbox issue is not completely fixed. I had pinned a game to a certain version to play with my friends on their server, and when they updated I couldn’t change the version by the right click menu because it was broken. Eventually I found someone who had the issue and used Big Picture mode to change settings which worked. They fixed that but the right click menu is still broken. The initial menu items work fine, but the submenu option all click what is underneath the menu and selects that instead.

Not that it has anything to do with the original problem from the OP, but it’s yet another Steam annoyance. If anyone else has the same problem, they can always use settings in Big Picture mode.

11

So just to try to get a handle on this issue, since it is related to Steam, I would have to conclude there is something that has changed in the Steam Client that has triggered this behavior.

I have searched the Steam Community pages and found others with similar issues dating back to at least 2016.

So not sure this is strictly a Windows OS issue but maybe some interaction with the latest Windows 11 build and the GPU drivers ?

Anybody have any further thoughts and where to look ?

I’ve reviewed the Steam Client settings pages and found a couple of settings that I disabled as I don’t use those functions like streaming for instance and remote play for another.

Just not finding anything else that may play into this ?

I do see some Hardware GPU acceleration settings too but is this really going to do anything ?

12

Updated findings on this issue:

It is happening still but a lot less often.

Also noting that the refresh is not taking focus for the most part, like 99% of the time it is just doing it in the background and not taking focus from the game I would normally be playing when this happens.

There have been updates to both the Steam Client and to the AMD driver package for Windows 11 so maybe a combination of both ?