Your system information

• Steam Deck (Steam OS) - The same behavior happens with the Windows Steam client on Windows 11
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [No]

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

I have about 300-350 kbps download.

Whenever the Steam client updates (On Steam Deck or Windows, it doesn't make a difference which) there are multiple problems with a connection that slow.

1. The Steam client does not tell you anywhere that it's downloading an update for the client.

If you look at the Steam client while an update for the client is happening, it looks like nothing is going on. The Downloads section of the Library shows nothing happening.

You have to look at System Monitor on Steam Deck, or Task Manager on Windows, just to be able to tell that anything is downloading through the Steam client. That's pretty strange, really. And certainly confusing. When a client updates starts, all of a sudden internet will choke, pages won't load, and the Steam client gives no indication that it's the cause.

1. When a Steam client update is downloading, it uses full bandwidth, chokes the internet on a slow connection,--and most importantly, cannot be speed limited like game downloads can.

No matter what download limit is set, the Steam client always grabs a client update at full speed as if no download limit was set. Why is the download limit ignored for client updates? This lead to problem three.

1. The only way to stop the internet being choked, and to make it so pages will load again, is to close the Steam client entirely.

That means no playing Steam games until there's a time where no one would mind if the internet gets choked to the point it's unusable, because if the Steam client is launched there's no predicting when it will try to grab the client update and choke the internet again.

Why is there no scheduling or download rate limiting for client updates like there is for games?

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Set your internet bandwith limit on the test pc to 300kps download somehow. (Not the Steam client, make it so the pc itself can only download 300kbps. Surely there must be some way to do that). Or get on a 300kbps connection somehow.
2. Set the download limit in the Steam client to less than that. For example 100kbps.
3. Trigger a Steam client update (I would guess Valve must have a way of doing that to test things).
4. Open Task Manager, or whatever software will show how much bandwidth a program is using. Notice that Steam is using the full 300kbps bandwidth to download the client update, instead of the 100kbps download limit that is set.
5. Try to load web pages or do anything on the internet, and see how badly choked and unusable everything is until the update is finished or the Steam client is closed.

Expected Behavior

Have some way of:

1. Seeing in the Steam client itself when a Steam client update is downloading, and at what speed it's downloading at.
2. Be able to schedule it and pause Steam client updates like games can be.
3. Have the download rate limit which is set for games affect Steam client updates too! They shouldn't download at a higher rate then the download limit.

I can't even guess how many times I've had to close the Steam client over the years when an update for the client started, because the internet suddenly became choked to the point it's unusable.