Change Steam Default Download Location

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Dec 3, 2017 - Valve has baked a feature into Steam for you to change game. In the Settings window, click Downloads in the pane on the left, then “Steam Library Folders.”. To change the default Library Folder, just right-click the one you. Here's how to change which drive you install them on. How to change where EA Origin installs games on your PC. Under on your computer find game library location.

3 years ago

/u/Riekopo was trying to change their screenshot folder location the other day and it wasn't quite working. I found a tutorial on StackExchange which explains that Steam will only save uncompressed Screenshots to a custom location and has a short explanation how to make it work for all screenshots, but I wanted to expand on it as it doesn't include removal instructions and some other useful info.

The following is a tutorial to create a symbolic link from the default Steam screenshot folder to a custom location. A lot like a shortcut in Windows or alias on Mac, but better. This will make it easier to view your screenshot folder without having to navigate to it, or you could use it to easily synch to some kind of cloud storage.

  • On both OSes you can use the tab key while typing a path in the terminal (command prompt) to use auto-complete, which helps a lot.

  • AccountID in the paths below should be replaced with your SteamID3; this can be found by navigating to your Steamuserdata folder and looking in there (if you’re the only user on your PC there should be only one folder in there) or by going to https://steamdb.info/calculator/ and looking under 'AccountID' after you sign in with your Steam account - the numbers after 'U:#:' (without quotes; # is probably 1 but may be another number) are what you want (yes, it says Steam3 ID somewhere else for some reason, but that’s not what we’re after).

Windows
  • Note - on Windows this makes the screenshots appear within the custom folder.

Change steam default download location google

First - delete the remote folder from C:Program Files (x86)SteamuserdataAccountID760

Next - open a Command Prompt as Admin (right click->Run as Admin') and then use this command (your Steam folder location may differ):

mklink /D 'C:Program Files (x86)SteamuserdataAccountID760remote' 'pathto customscreenshotfolder'

Change Steam Default Download Location Google

You can remove the symbolic link on Windows using (again, fix the path):

Change Steam Default Download Location

del 'C:Program Files (x86)SteamuserdataAccountID760remote'

Or by just right clicking & pressing 'Delete' - the del command originally worked, but in further testing I had to right click & delete it.

  • Note - on Mac this makes a 'shortcut' file in the custom location that let's you easily navigate to the original remote folder.

  • Note - replace 'username' in the paths below with your username on the PC.

First remove the remote folder from Users/username/Library/Application Support/Steam/userdata/AccountID/760/

Next - in Mac’s Terminal - type in the following command:

sudo ln -s 'Users/username/Library/Application Support/Steam/userdata/AccountID/760/remote' 'path/to custom/screenshot/folder/'

The sudo command is the equivalent of 'run as admin' for Windows, but possibly more dangerous - please do not mess around, and make sure you enter the command & path correctly!

Change Steam Default Download Location On Mac

The symbolic link can be removed on Mac using (yet again, fix the path):

rm /path/to custom/screenshot/folder/remote

Where remote is the name of the symlink file that was created above.

Tested on Windows XP & OS X 10.9.5.

Please feel free to comment with corrections, hatred, etc if I've screwed up at all; I'm an amateur with command prompt/terminal and the directions were built from tutorials of others who seem smarter. Pretty sure the Mac version can be refined and made so that the screenshots appear in the custom folder instead of just having a shortcut to the original location.

Any praise should go to /u/Riekopo and that StackExchange post - if not for them I never would've done this as I rarely take screenshots and don't actually care where my screenshot folder is, lol.

2 comments

I have a classroom of 35 Ubuntu computers managed by Puppet. I want to install Steam on them... no prob here.

But student home drives are networked, and I don't want Steam downloading to their networked home drives by default.

Each computer has a 1 TB SSD, and a shared space at /shared. This is where I want the default download location set to.

Is there a way for me to change Steam's default download folder via the command line, for all users of Steam?

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