I can confirm this. I think the issue is present since Steam for Linux Beta release.
Any other IM program (Skype, Pidgin, etc.) detects inactivity just fine.

My system info: https://gist.github.com/Alex7Kom/b9169e3e84b6a9465db8

Same request here; and if you implement it please also make an option to turn it on/off and let us choose the time interval after steam marks us "away" (automatically)

@Nooby4Ever This issue is a bug report, not a feature request. Auto-away feature is present in Steam on other platforms since forever, but it doesn't work on Linux.

Wow someone actually labeled this issue as a feature request, but it is not. @johndrinkwater?

Yes i know but because it has the feature request label i thought they didn't see it as a bug; although i agree it is one.

Hmm, don’t recall tagging it as feature request but it can happen; noted and changed tagging.

Is there any update on this? It's a very basic feature, and it shouldn't take much effort to implement it.

Yeah this is pretty annoying and has been this way from the start AFAIK. Would really appreciate a fix.

This particular bug has been afflicting me for many months, and would be nice to have fixed. Maybe if the steam client code was open sourced, someone from the community could submit a fix ;)

is this fixed?

Im still having the same problem on archlinux.

Issue is still present for me as well.

This issue still affects me. Currently using Arch Linux (3.17.6-1-ARCH)

when running steamos the latest client beta sets my status as offline after signing in so this may be indicative this bug is being worked on.

I think in Settings/Friends you have "Automatically sign into Friends when I start Steam" unchecked. That has nothing to do with this issue.

Workaround: http://pastebin.com/CmA5kmST

@Rocik Thanks for the workaround!

@Rocik Nice, thanks. Is there a way I can make steam run the script every time i launch it ?

Should be a simple launcher script like

#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/local/bin/awaychecker.sh &
/usr/bin/steam
pkill awaychecker.sh

The & backgrounds the first command, and proceeds to next command, when you close steam, then pkill should run and clean up the script.

Note: this is untested.

@dsibenik Script itself works only if steam is running, but in case you don't want additional process @Tele42 launcher should work.

@Rocik @Tele42 thanks! works like a charm ;)

This is quite a shame that this issue was reported more than 2 years age and yet it is not fixed!

@Rocik I have added these lines to the beginning of the loop so that it ends when steam exits. pkill doesn't work for me from @Tele42's launcher script.

if [[ ! $(ps aux | grep "/usr/bin/stea[m]") ]]; then
    exit
fi

This bug is still in existence. Mint XFCE 17.3.

I think people are used to just seeing me as permanently marked 'online' now after a couple of years of this bug, but would be nice to have fixed.

Can confirm this still happens. I had someone ask me today if I ever slept since they never saw me marked aw away or snooze, which explains some of the weird messages I've gotten at like 4am.

This doesn't happen on any other platform, and other messengers can detect this status just fine, so a fix would be appreciated.

I have this issue as well, unfortunately valve doesn't really care about the linux user base much anymore.

Come on Valve, please fix this.

Is xprintidle actually working reliably for you guys? The XScreenSaver extension's idle time is periodically resetting every few minutes in our testing, even on an idle system.

@Plagman Is xprintidle still maintained? Anyway, I have thought it is unmaintained so that's why I wrote small C program where I used XScreenSaverInfo's idle to retrieve the idle time and set away/online status based on that. https://linux.die.net/man/3/xscreensaverqueryinfo.

We have some test code in Steam that does that now, I was asking how xprintidle was working for people because it also uses it and got linked above, but it just doesn't work. It goes back to 0s idle by itself every few minutes, so it's not reliable to track auto-away.

@Plagman I have added logs to my script:

[Tue Nov 29 20:03:31 CET 2016] status changed to away
[Tue Nov 29 20:15:46 CET 2016] status changed to online

I have been using xprintidle for quite a long time and never noticed timer reset. It would change my state to online for 5 minutes.
I'll try to test it for longer periods of time.

I'm running on fresh packages. Maybe that is the case?

I was also running recent versions of everything on an Ubuntu 16.10 install. I tested it across several desktop environments and hardware configs and it's reliable on some, but not others, so we just opted to use an alternate method to detect idle time. The next major Steam client beta cycle will have support for changing your status when idle like other platforms.

I'll get someone to check my status overnight and see if it's away/snooze. Is there any way for us to test (should it output something to a terminal if we don't detach it from a terminal?)

Thanks!

I can confirm that this is now working correctly for me with stable client, thanks! I had twitch running, but walked away from my computer for a while, which seemed to prevent screen from turning away so I was able to see that I'm marked as away.