protonscr

Steam keeps opening a window over the game every time

steamopen Steam clientDistro Family: Ubuntu
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#13301 · opened 2026-06-08 by Tosty159 · updated 2026-08-05 · 4 comments · github
TTosty159 2026-06-08 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): Mon, Jun 1, 2026 11:04 PM UTC -08:00
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Ubuntu 24.04
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] No
  • Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes
  • Steam Logs: [generate by running this command in a terminal tar -zcvf ~/Desktop/steam-logs.tar.gz ~/.steam/steam/logs] steam-logs.tar.gz
  • GPU: Nvidia/Intel/AMD

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen. Please link any large code pastes as a Github Gist
Whenever I start Steam and launch a game, in the first 5 minutes of launching, Steam opens another window on top of the game disrupting the gameplay. This usually happens once or twice in the first five minutes, and it only started to happen after I downloaded Steam using apt, because I was using snap prior.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Open Steam.
  2. Launch a game.
  3. Wait a few seconds/minutes.
Aaleex5 2026-06-09 github

The same thing happens in Debian

TTosty159 2026-06-09 github

The same thing happens in Debian

I think it's something to do with using apt to download Steam. Because it used to work fine when I used snap for it.

Aaleex5 2026-06-10 github

The same thing happens in Debian

I think it's something to do with using apt to download Steam. Because it used to work fine when I used snap for it.

I've always used the deb version from the Debian repositories and I haven't had these problems. In fact, I don't think it's a problem with the deb package; I think it's a recent Steam issue. Looking at the system monitor, I see that SteamWebHelper does strange things when I'm playing, like increasing CPU usage. If I remember correctly, one day I saw it at around 20%.

Aaleex5 2026-08-05 github

It seems this problem occurs with zram. If I use the full capacity of my RAM in "zram-size," the problem starts happening after a while while gaming. However, if I set "zram-size" to 8GB or more, it stops. I suspect this is because I don't have much RAM available; I only have 5.7GB usable out of the 8GB I have, because I'm using the integrated graphics of a Ryzen processor.

It would be strange if this happened to someone with more RAM; then I wouldn't know why it happens, but at least it happens to me for the reasons I explained before.

Nothing extracted yet.