Sorry for bumping this, but this issue still exists, it's just not Fedora specific.

I use Arch Linux on both my desktop and laptop, and whenever I switch to either of them, I have to enter my password even though the "Remember my password" option is selected. I can switch to Windows and back without problems though.

Still present for me under 2 Arch Linux Installations on laptop and desktop :(

Yup still the same here too. If any more info is needed i'll be happy to provide it.

I don't think the "same distro" matters either. This happens with my Fedora 23 laptop and my Ubuntu 15.10 desktop. and I hop a lot, it happened on many other combinations of fedora/ubuntu/arch.

I disabled my two party authenticator because of this reason, it's really irritating.

I can report the same. Lately switched my laptop back to Ubuntu (but desktop on Arch), and this issue still happens. Can this sometime be fixed?

Can confirm this issue.

Hoping between Fedora Laptop and Arch Desktop daily and have to relogin everytime.
It really starts to become an issue for me because of two-factor auth i cannot login if i forgot my phone for example.

Edit: Just noticed this issue is open since 2013! I had this once in a while before but for the last months it happens always.

New laptop with Ubuntu, same issue. It's not hardware specific clearly, just Linux specific.

Seriously, can SOMEONE from Valve take a look at this and fix it? It's really annoying and it causes me to not setup two-factor auth.

Still an issue! Can some look into this, please?

Please make sure that you unchecked "Don't save account credentials on this computer" in Steam -> Settings -> Account. For some weird reason it was suddenly checked on my computer and caused the problem.

I have similar issue. I have dual boot Ubuntu/Windows and notebook with Ubuntu. Steam is installed on all three system. Notebook and Windows can login properly without problem. But dualboot Ubuntu can't remember login for more like 24 hours. I can restart between Windows and Ubuntu and it works. But after 24 hours I get password prompt and must enter code.

@Holzhaus Yes its unchecked.

Arch linux 64 bit, Steam doesn't remember any credentials.

Can confirm between 2 Arch linux installations

Affects me too: Ubuntu 16.04 on my XPS 13 and Ubuntu 16.04 on my HTPC. Both 64bit.
Remember my password checked and Don't store credentials unchecked.

I have another desktop running Win7 which is not affected.

In big picture on my couch with controller especially it is a massive pain to enter a lengthy password + TFA code each time.

the description is not clear. for example i have Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 so one Steam instance is not on Linux and i also have this issue and Steam on Ubuntu cannot save my password permanently. but this is my only active Linux installation now. so i guess it's not a Linux vs. Linux or a Linux vs. Windows bug, simple a Steam Linux client bug.

Interesting. Linux steam remembers my password (either on my laptop or on my HTPC) as long as I don't log into the other linux one in the meantime. If for example I only had my win7 box and my linux HTPC, I'd have to enter my password/TFA code once on each and they would be remembered from then on.

steam does not remember my password ever, mint 18 MATE, The default keyring is unlocked. remember password box checked, and 'do not store login cred..." unchecked...

insanely annoying to have to enter my encrypted password over and over again.

I think this is keyring/auto login related

tl;dr I hate reentering credentials whenever starting steam.

Same here for a couple of weeks, no problems before.

Using Ubuntu and Fedora, I change OS, use Steam once then it forgets my credentials for the other OS. I do not care much about reentering my account and password but I also have to enter my steam guard data which really sucks coz I have to look for my phone, recharge it, use this aweful guard app...

I came across a similiar problem while poking around:

If I have two steam installations for two different users on the same computer in different directories the same happens when changing the directory, eg

cd /steam/foo/ && ./steam.sh +map_background none "steam://store" -console -login foo password
cd /steam/bar/ && ./steam.sh +map_background none "steam://store" -console -login bar password

and voila, have to reenter steam guard code.

Even better this even happens when only using ONE single user with ONE operating system:

cd /steam/foo/ && ./steam.sh +map_background none "steam://store" -console -login foo password
cd /steam/foo/ && ./steam.sh +map_background none "steam://store" -console -login foo password

and again, have to reenter steam guard code.

I can leave away the login part:
cd /steam/foo/ && ./steam.sh +map_background none "steam://store" -console

Now I can start steam as often as I want without entering credentials (funny, by leaving away login information I do not have to enter them over and over again). BUT as soon as I log in as another user or from another OS I have to reenter ALL credentials again, thats user, pass and guard.

(I have three screens, keyboards and mice connected to my old system and we often use the system with several people at once, even playing L4D with two people at once and a third surfing the web and yepp, it is an old but powerfull eight core Xeon system with 16GB memory and things run very smooth - two screen connected to the Geforce 8800 GTX and one to the Intel 945 GPU - but as you can see from my earlier post, the overall problem doesn't seem to be connected to this setup)

I confirm, it's still an issue. I have Ubuntu MATE on a desktop and a laptop, and everytime I switch, I have to re-enter my credentials, even if the "Remember password" is checked.
Common, it's been three years since this post exists, and nothing has changed. What are you doing, Valve??

Arch Desktop, Debian HTPC. This is really annoying as on my HTPC with Steam BPM + Controller, no keyboard or mouse, entering a password is a pain. Valve, you really need to get on top of this.

This issue should be fixed in the next full Beta cycle. Thanks for the report.

Haven't had to re-enter my password on either my home or work pcs for a few days now. Seems to be fixed for me! Thanks /u/plagman et al

@bradgy beta or stable?

I switched to beta on notebook. Now both desktop with normal release and notebook with beta stay logged in.

i have beta on both @calexil

Can confirm. I only switched one steam to beta and both stay logged in.

I have the same issue since a while, on stable and beta. I always have to re-enter my credentials. Using Ubuntu 16.04 here.

edit:

I think I have found a solution!!

First I log in and then close Steam. Then I set the user rights of ~/.steam/registry.vdf to read-only. Now it always logs me in automatically. By the way, that way I can change the interface language too, because it was always setting it back to English.

Had the issue just today on a fresh Arch install with the steam version from the official repos.

Now tried @darealshinji's suggestion and hope it will fix it.

@darealshinji Any negative side effects of this? Inspecting the file with vim, it appears to contain a list of which games (by ID) are installed, which are running, and which are updating, in addition to the Steam PID when running. If Steam is not allowed to write to this file, it might create weird bugs

@Suppen Oh crap, you're right. I don't need to do this trick any longer so I had no issues. I gave it a try and it didn't automatically continue an installation after closing Steam and restarting it, but otherwise there seem to be no issues. So I guess it's used for the Steam client on start-up to figure out if it was left with something to do.

I wonder why this issue is still open. Got fixed a while ago.

Why is this closed? I still have this issue. Password is not remembered.

This is what registry.vdf looks like after closing Steam:

"Registry"
{
	"HKLM"
	{
		"Software"
		{
			"Valve"
			{
				"Steam"
				{
					"SteamPID"		"0"
					"TempAppCmdLine"		""
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

I can confirm that steam forgets passwords on systems with multiple accounts.

you have to reenter them when switching, every time

@kisak-valve My system is Ubuntu 16.04 64 bits, no encrypted home folder. File system is the default one (ext4 I think). I don't know if using Steam on Linux and Windows 10 counts as "multiple Steam installs". My system has only one account but it still forgets the password when I restart Steam.

So you have this problem between Windows and Linux? The original issue was only between multiple Linux installations and that got fixed.

It also happens if I only use Linux.

@darealshinji with my setup too, I am only using Linux on one pc with steam and have the issue

Same with me. I have the problem with one computer, but not the other. They both run Kubuntu 17.04

I noticed something on a place with no internet. Steam forgot me again, so I had to reenter my credentials. I mistyped my password, and Steam told me it had no connection to the Internet, and could therefore not check if the user existed. Result: I got dumped back to the login. However, when I retyped my password correctly, it went throug before giving me a dialog saying it could not connect to the Internet, and asking me if I would like to retry the connection or start in offline mode. Offline mode worked.

So it appears Steam still remembers the user and the correct credentials, but is unable to fetch them for some reason

Same with me. From months ago it was working but does not now anymore. Sometimes steam client not ask me for credentials, many times steam client ask me for credentials.
Debian Jessie.

This issue is still present...
And the fact that the password isn't remembered is just one of the consequences.
It seems like a part of the Steam config is reset from time to time and the ~/.steam/registry.vdf file seems to play an important role in this issue.

This makes the Steam experience on Linux pretty bad for a lots of people. It's a shame that there is absolulty no clues to fix it since so many years...

Please, is someone able to clearly tell me what's going on?

I have this issue as well. I have Steam on two arch linux installations and on a Windows 10 installation. Steam credentials on Arch seem to be forgotten and ignore sometimes after I play on Windows 10 (not always).

This hasn't been a issue for me except the past year or so, but it happens every time I open steam. It ALWAYS asks for the username and password for my account.

Don't worry, I have a fix. Don't do this on any computer with multiple user accounts, unless you change file permissions so only you can access your home folder. Create a shell script with the following code in it:

#!/bin/bash
steam -login Username SteamPassword

Obvsiously, replace Username and SteamPassword with your REAL credentials. When you open the script the steam login screen will appear, but the login button will already be pressed and the details will be filled in for you. It will login by itself and immediately go to your library, like it should. It's that simple.

I also recommend compiling the shell script with a shell script compiler like shc (https://github.com/neurobin/shc), which obfuscates and signs the contents. Obviously, this is not a big security risk, because if you change your password, it will no longer work. Any passwords saved on your computer are already at risk if someone gets physical access anyway.

Partial workaround as it does not solve the problem for people using 2-step authentication

It also doesn't solve the problem for people using a language other than English.

Steam always lost my language and account settings each start (Ubuntu 18.04). I don't use multiple accounts or anything like that.

The way I "fixed" this was removing writting permissions on the registry.vdf. You have to do this while Steam is running and everything is well configured, because the file gets corrupted when Steam is closed. So far, I had no issues installing or removing games.

chmod a-w ~/.steam/registry.vdf

Removing writting permission for ~/.steam/registry.vdf also works for me on Gentoo. But would it fail to boot when my session times out?

@darealshinji's method worked for me:

I have the same issue since a while, on stable and beta. I always have to re-enter my credentials. Using Ubuntu 16.04 here.

edit:

I think I have found a solution!!

First I log in and then close Steam. Then I set the user rights of ~/.steam/registry.vdf to read-only. Now it always logs me in automatically. By the way, that way I can change the interface language too, because it was always setting it back to English.

However, your ~/.steam/registry.vdf must be read and writable before you open Steam and login manually as otherwise Steam won't be able to write to it:

1. Delete your ~/.steam/registry.vdf and create a new empty one.
2. chmod 755 ~/.steam/registry.vdf
3. Open Steam, manually login and check the "remember client credentials" option.
4. Your ~/.steam/registry.vdf should be written now. Next, use chmod 0444 ~/.steam/registry.vdf to set its permissions to read-only.
5. Close and exit Steam completely.
6. If you open Steam now, it shouldn't ask for your client credentials anymore.

Good luck! :smile::+1:

The solution I posted above doesn't seem to work on the latest version anymore, too.
Feels like valve actually tries to force Linux users to manually login on purpose... :confused:

The solution I posted above doesn't seem to work on the latest version anymore, too.
Feels like valve actually tries to force Linux users to manually login on purpose... confused

Steam seems to create a backup of the old file called registry.vdf.old on startup.

I copied the contents of the registry.vdf to registry.vdf.old after step 4 and the solution seemed to work after that. Seems like simple coding error and lack of tests to me.

Update: forget this, steam updated and botched the login again.

Great, now they messed it up totally.

You can still simply prevent modification or deletion of the registry.vdf file by removing the write permission of the ~/.steam directory. This will keep the file in the correct state to allow automatic login. However, when Steam tries to update it won't be able to write to the steam directory anymore resulting in future Steam updates to fail.

@Ishidres For me ~/.steam doesn't contain any of the actual Steam files but mostly symlinks:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  23 Jul 18 16:26 bin -> /home/djcj/.steam/bin32
lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  41 Jul 18 16:26 bin32 -> /home/djcj/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32
lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  41 Jul 18 16:26 bin64 -> /home/djcj/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64
-r--r--r-- 1 djcj djcj 299 Jul 18 16:26 registry.vdf
-rwxrwxr-x 1 djcj djcj 299 Jul 18 16:14 registry.vdf_default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  29 Jul 18 16:26 root -> /home/djcj/.local/share/Steam
lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  37 Jul 18 16:26 sdk32 -> /home/djcj/.local/share/Steam/linux32
lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  37 Jul 18 16:26 sdk64 -> /home/djcj/.local/share/Steam/linux64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 djcj djcj  29 Jul 18 16:26 steam -> /home/djcj/.local/share/Steam
-rw-rw-r-- 1 djcj djcj   6 Aug 10 20:20 steam.pid
prw------- 1 djcj djcj   0 Aug  7 11:32 steam.pipe

Updates are working fine. Not sure about steam.pid and steam.pipe but I never had issues with that.

However, your ~/.steam/registry.vdf must be read and writable before you open Steam and login manually as otherwise Steam won't be able to write to it:

1. Delete your `~/.steam/registry.vdf` and create a new empty one.

2. `chmod 755 ~/.steam/registry.vdf`

3. Open Steam, manually login and **check the "remember client credentials" option**.

4. Your `~/.steam/registry.vdf` should be written now. Next, use `chmod 0444 ~/.steam/registry.vdf` to set its permissions to read-only.

5. Close and exit Steam completely.

6. If you open Steam now, it shouldn't ask for your client credentials anymore.

Good luck! smile+1

Currently, I use this to force the file not to be deleted:

chattr +i ~/.steam/registry.vdf

It's been a while the last time I had this issue. Not sure how, but it seems to be fixed for me. :man_shrugging:

Is this security related from the server-side by any chance? :thinking:
It seems this only happens when my locations are constantly changing (e.g. switching VPN countries).
And it seems to be even worse when I have my Steam account actively logged in on a server that is located in a completely different country from my PC as well (steam cards farm bot).

I say this cause I've tried those methods above, but no luck.
I've confirmed the registry.vdf file hadn't been tampered with by Steam after I closed it and ran it again, cause I did both the chmod 444 and especially chattr +i (it seemed like Steam would overwrite the file if I didn't do chattr +i).
So I concluded it was simply that the server didn't like it, instead of it being an issue with the client :thought_balloon: