I've used Steam for decades and I genuinely like the platform, so I want to be clear this comes from a good place. But the close button not closing the app is something I've put up with for too long, and I can't find a single good reason it's still like this. If it wasn't Valve, I'd say the reason is corporate greed and spying on their users.
When I click the X on a window, I expect the program to quit. That's what it does in every other application I run, and the ones that don't, I normally uninstall. Steam instead hides itself to the tray and keeps running, and the only way to actually shut it down is to hunt for the menu or right-click the tray icon. So the button labeled "close" doesn't close anything, and I have to take a second deliberate action every time to do the thing I already told it to do. NOT EVEN ALT+F4 CLOSES STEAM!!!
If I wanted to minimize Steam, I would have clicked minimize!
I know the usual answer is "Steam needs to keep running for games." Fine, then make that the default. I'm not asking you to take anything away from anyone. I'm asking for one checkbox: "Close button exits Steam." Leave it off by default if you want. Just let the people who don't want a background process sitting there choose otherwise. And Steam can still launch itself when I open a game. If I want to save the two seconds it takes Steam to start, I can choose to leave it running in the background. That's fine. JUST GIVE ME THE CHOICE!
And before anyone points me at STEAM_FRAME_FORCE_CLOSE=1: it doesn't work on the current client. I set it, confirmed it's in the process environment, and the close button still just minimizes. So right now there is no reliable way to get this behavior at all, official or otherwise.
What pushed me to open this is that the main existing request for it, #1025 "Close to Tray" , was closed without the option ever being added and the original #11 before it went the same way. That frustrated me enough to file a fresh one. I'm hoping a new ticket actually gets things moving this time.
The fact that it's been requested for over a decade and still isn't there is honestly the strangest part. Please just add the option and let users make their close button actually work like a close button. Please I beg you!
I've used Steam for decades and I genuinely like the platform, so I want to be clear this comes from a good place. But the close button not closing the app is something I've put up with for too long, and I can't find a single good reason it's still like this. If it wasn't Valve, I'd say the reason is corporate greed and spying on their users.
When I click the X on a window, I expect the program to quit. That's what it does in every other application I run, and the ones that don't, I normally uninstall. Steam instead hides itself to the tray and keeps running, and the only way to actually shut it down is to hunt for the menu or right-click the tray icon. So the button labeled "close" doesn't close anything, and I have to take a second deliberate action every time to do the thing I already told it to do. NOT EVEN ALT+F4 CLOSES STEAM!!!
If I wanted to minimize Steam, I would have clicked minimize!
I know the usual answer is "Steam needs to keep running for games." Fine, then make that the default. I'm not asking you to take anything away from anyone. I'm asking for one checkbox: "Close button exits Steam." Leave it off by default if you want. Just let the people who don't want a background process sitting there choose otherwise. And Steam can still launch itself when I open a game. If I want to save the two seconds it takes Steam to start, I can choose to leave it running in the background. That's fine. JUST GIVE ME THE CHOICE!
And before anyone points me at STEAM_FRAME_FORCE_CLOSE=1: it doesn't work on the current client. I set it, confirmed it's in the process environment, and the close button still just minimizes. So right now there is no reliable way to get this behavior at all, official or otherwise.
What pushed me to open this is that the main existing request for it, #1025 "Close to Tray" , was closed without the option ever being added and the original #11 before it went the same way. That frustrated me enough to file a fresh one. I'm hoping a new ticket actually gets things moving this time.
The fact that it's been requested for over a decade and still isn't there is honestly the strangest part. Please just add the option and let users make their close button actually work like a close button. Please I beg you!