Whenever you’re playing games on steam, recording your gameplay is very simple. Whether you’ve earned a new trophy or are merely doing something cool in the game, all you need to do is press the F12 key and steam will take a screenshot. The captured screenshots are sharable on various social media platforms that have been linked to steam and are also sharable on your steam profile. The ability to instantaneously screenshot in-game events and share them with your friends is a big part of what makes modern gaming so exciting.
While taking a screenshot inside steam is relatively simple, finding the steam screenshot folder can be a chore. Most users tend to struggle to access their screenshots as it isn’t as easy to access as it is on the consoles. There are two practical methods with which you can access your collection of steam screenshots. One way is to open up steams in-built screenshot manager, and the alternative is to locate the steam screenshot folder on your hard drive.
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The in-built Screenshot manager
As mentioned above one method of accessing your screenshots is opening the in-built client. Opening the screenshot manager is a straightforward task. Just open your steam client. On the top left corner where all the menus are is the View tab, clicking the tab will cause the list to drop down. Proceed to scroll downwards until you find screenshots and clicking this will open the in-built screenshot manager.
An in-built screenshot manager is a nifty tool, but it leaves a lot to be desired as well. It offers a few useful features such as automatically categorizing your screenshots by game. The drop down for games is in the upper left corner of the screenshot manager. In addition to this, the in-built client allows you to upload the images to various social media that you have linked to steam. You can also upload posts to your steam profile if you please. Alongside the upload button is the delete button which permanently removes a screenshot from your hard drive — making it a sufficiently functional client.
Another rather convenient feature is the ability to add captions to each photo in your library. The caption feature is not present on consoles, and it allows you to add a quick note to remember why you took the screenshot. Furthermore, the client will enable users to access the hard drive by selecting the “show on disk” command. However, the client doesn’t allow you to edit pictures whatsoever; you can’t even crop the images. The photos uploaded in their routine in- game state and for those who like a little bit more freedom, it is best to edit the screenshots externally.
Accessing the screenshot folder manually
There are two ways to access the steam screenshot folder on your hard drive. The first is the relatively easy method which involves your in-built screenshot manager. The “show on disk” command allows you to open your steam screenshot location on the hard drive quickly. There is another way to access the steam screenshot folder manually.
Inputting the steam screenshot folder command into your file location allows you to access your steam screenshot location manually.
The console command is as follows: \steam\userdata\<userid>\760\remote\<appID>\screenshots\ inputting the command alongside your User ID and App ID for the game opens the screenshot folder. You can also go on exploring and find the folder in the C drive yourself, but the methods mentioned above save a lot more time.
If you don’t know your User ID, you will not be able to input the command. To check your User ID, you’ll again need to go towards the top left corner of your steam client. Select view and from the drop-down menu proceed to select settings. Once the settings are open, the left-hand side of the settings tabs contains categories, among these categories select interface. On the right-hand side of the tab will be the settings you can change, amongst these tick the box for “Display stream URL address bar when available. After this is done go back to the steam homepage and view your profile. Once you do this, the URL bar will showcase your User ID, to avoid any confusion your user ID is the only number in the URL.
How to find a game’s App ID?
To find the App ID for the specific game screenshots, you’re looking for you need to open your steam client. After opening the client proceed to head into the steam store, once you’re in the steam store just visit the game’s page. Upon opening the games page, you will find the App ID in the URL bar. Each game has its unique ID so if you’re somebody that struggles to remember things it’s best to write it down, will save you the trouble of going back and checking again.
If you’re somebody that has just a ton of games in their steam library and can’t be bothered to go onto each game dedicated store page there is another option. Just use the steamdb database. Steamdb is a website containing all the information you’ll ever need about what happens in the steam application database. It is a simple matter of searching for the game whose App ID you need and opening the game page. The game page contains all the information you’ll need regarding the game, and the App ID is in the table containing game information.
Using the console command mentioned above with your user ID and specific game ID will open your steam screenshot folder and allowing you to open the pictures with whatever software you like and edit them to your heart’s desire. Furthermore, it will enable you to upload to any social media account; it doesn’t need to be linked with steam. You can also arrange the screenshots however way you like, using windows file explorer. The photographs can be arranged according to the time they were taken and according to their name among other options.
These are the two main ways you can access your steam screenshot location; there are some errors that you may face while trying to access this folder. One such issue that may not let you open up the folder may arise due to permissions. Be sure to run your command as admin while trying to access the steam screenshot folder manually.
If you don’t want to go into the C drive constantly and want to save your steam screenshots in a folder of your choice, you can do that as well.
How to change the steam screenshot location?
The first step in changing your steam screenshot location is, going towards the top left-hand corner of the client again. From here select the view tab and open settings from the drop-down menu. From the settings menu select the in-game tab, this will show you several settings that you can adjust. The settings will also allow you to change your screenshot hotkey and pick a key of your choice. Underneath this option will be the screenshot folder button. Clicking the screenshot folder button will open up another menu that allows you to change the steam screenshot locations.
You may think you’re ready to go and if you aren’t familiar with how steam works, you probably went to check the new folder after taking screenshots. Upon opening the new steam screenshot folder, you’d be surprised to see it empty. Do not panic; you haven’t lost any screenshots, they will all still save in the original folder. The problem is that steam only saves uncompressed copies into the new folder. If you haven’t clicked the “save an uncompressed copy” option than it is highly unlikely that you will find any screenshots in your new folder. Uncompressed copies of the images are mostly saved in the TGA format which the default windows application don’t support. You’ll be required to convert and compress your pictures externally using software if you want to use them anymore. If you’re going to avoid the hassle altogether, there is another way of changing your steam screenshot location.
Changing the folder where compressed copies are is slightly difficult. To change it you’ll need to use some command console trickery. Using the windows command console can be slightly intimidating for users that haven’t accessed it beforehand. However, the method we’re employing is fairly simple. Firstly you need to delete the existing remote folder; the remote folder can be accessed easily once you’re in the C driver where steam program data usually is. After deleting the remote folder, this is where the command console comes in. After opening the command console as an admin, input the following command mklink /D “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\AccountID\760\remote” “path\to custom\screenshot\folder”. Note that the location and name of your screenshot folder may be different, but this method will allow you to change your screenshot location to wherever you want.
Steam maybe one of the oldest powered gaming clients in the world but its UI design leaves a lot to be desired. Taking screenshots and sharing them with your friends is a big part of modern gaming, and the consoles manage to do this in an incredibly user-friendly way. It is arguable that consoles aren’t as powerful or vast as PCs with no option to adjust the interface like the ones steam have provided. The design of the overall interface far exceeds that of steam and is much more user-friendly. Steam could do with making some changes to the way it manages your screenshots because not everyone will appreciate how many rings you have to go through for such a simple feature.