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4

I have a substantial Steam library, and a new computer with plenty of disk space. I want to queue up all (or most) of my Steam games for downloading.

I know I can click on each one in turn, but I have to click a few times and wait while Steam creates locale game cache files.

Is there a way to do this quickly, preferably in bulk?

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4 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Steam has recently introduced an option to queue up games to be installed through a web interface. Make sure the target PC is running the Steam client, then go to your games list on the Steam website (the easiest way to do this is to click Community -> Profiles -> Games in the Steam client), open the All Games tab and click the install button next to the games you want to have installed. If not all of your games are showing up, click on Per page: All at the bottom of the page.

This is massively faster than going through the usual install dialog.

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Hmm if you can do it through the browser you can automate it through the browser... unless Valve put in some throttling stuff. – Tacroy Dec 21 '12 at 22:16
up vote 8 down vote

I assume its possible if you use the Steam browser protocol in a Batch (even even python) script.

here is a list of the possible commands, http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_browser_protocol

so you should need some thing like steam://install/<id> in a loop replacing the with the id of those games in your library. im not sure where you can get a list of game ID's you own.

who knows, maybe its even possible to just loop from 0 to 100000000, thus selecting every game you have on the way!

if you use this system id love to see your script!

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hmm, that would be an interesting option – Xantec Oct 8 '11 at 12:51
1  
Unfortunately, even if scripted, the steam://install link requires user interaction (clicking "Next", ugh) to proceed with the installation. Furthermore, I don't believe the script would have any way of knowing when a game installation completed, so as to start the next installation. – Amarok May 25 '12 at 7:39
This used to work and you'd only have to click "next" once, like when you buy multiple games. stevether.711clan.net/steamgames I guess subscriptioninstall doesn't work anymore. – Steve Robbins May 25 '12 at 17:20
up vote 6 down vote

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to queue the downloads in the way you want. If you still have your old computer, the easiest way to approximate this is to make a backup of your steamapps folder and re-install all your games from there, bypassing the need to re-download them. I suppose you could also transfer them from the old computer to the new one over a LAN, but I'd imagine most USB transfers would be faster.

Relevant forum post:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1251492

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up vote 0 down vote

steam://subscriptioninstall/id1/id2/... Opens a dialog box with a checklist of the games specified allowing you to install them all at once.

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Doesn't do anything on my end. I do have Steam running currently. – kotekzot Apr 29 at 11:02
@kotekzot Don't do the /id1 but replace that with your game id. Just like the anwser from TrewTzu. – Lyrion Apr 29 at 12:41
@Lyrion compiling a list of your games' IDs seems like a lot of work. Interesting option, though. – kotekzot Apr 29 at 13:16
@kotekzot Yep i agree, but if you could automate the process then it would be alot easyer. – Lyrion Apr 29 at 14:28
I wonder if anything bad would happen if you make this URL with every Steam ID for every Steam game? – Jay Bazuzi Apr 30 at 1:11

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