46

When you open up the Steam app and look at all the things in your Library at once, the Library contents are presented with portrait oriented images called box art.

Like these three images:

The Steam library shows the covers of the games

Is there any way to download them from somewhere, or are they stored on my computer somewhere?

'Cause I like some of mine, and I want to be able to have them without having to Print Screen and crop them out manually.

3
  • 9
    If I understand correctly, you're NOT asking where to get custom art for games that are missing it; rather, you're asking where to download the art Steam uses automatically for games that DO have it. There is a way to do this, although my google-fu is failing me at the moment. It involves getting the appID of the game you're interested in (visible in the URL when looking at the store page) and then hitting a steam API URL with the ID to download the art. I just can't find that API URL at the moment, and I'm at work so I can't spend forever looking. I'll try to follow up again later.
    – Steve-O
    Nov 1, 2019 at 13:24
  • @Steve-O - Corrrect. Thank you!
    – Malady
    Nov 1, 2019 at 13:28
  • I wonder if the Steam application also caches them somewhere on disk?
    – Smock
    Nov 1, 2019 at 13:31

2 Answers 2

54

As of today, the box art in this format (600x900) aren't cached, apparently. The format that is cached however, is 300x450, and is available in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\appcache\librarycache\ on Windows (or /Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/Steam/appcache/librarycache/ on MacOS, or ~/.local/share/Steam/appcache/librarycache/ on Linux).

The base URL for the box art in the format 600x900 is https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/<APP_ID>/library_600x900_2x.jpg, where <APP_ID> represents the id of the game you want. In order to get all the IDs for your game, go to your steam profile page where all your owned games are listed (https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/USER_ID/games/?tab=all), and you can click on each game and see the app ID in the URL.

I took the freedom to create a Python3 script, to automatically fetch all the officially available full-size box art for the games in your library, and save them to a folder on your desktop.
Make sure to change <USER_ID> in the url in the script to YOUR user ID. It can be found by using your browser, and finding your Steam account. The user ID will be the number at the end of the URL.

import urllib.request
import urllib.response
import re
import os

website = urllib.request.urlopen("https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/<USER_ID>/games/?tab=all").read().decode(
    'utf-8'
)
gameIDs = re.findall(r"(?:appid\":)\d+", website)
gameIDs[:] = [s.replace('appid\":', '') for s in gameIDs]
desktopfolder = os.path.expanduser('~/Desktop/steam_cover_art/')
if not os.path.exists(desktopfolder):
    os.makedirs(desktopfolder)

for i in gameIDs:
    try:
        URLOpen = urllib.request.urlopen("https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/"
                                         + i + "/library_600x900_2x.jpg").read()
        open(desktopfolder + i + 'p.jpg', 'wb+').write(URLOpen)
    except Exception as e:
        ResponseData = e.read().decode("utf8", 'replace')

NOTE
Not all games have official box art in this format. This is why sites like SteamGridDB have been created, in order to fill the gap.

P.S.:
There are also other official box art formats available, with the following URLs (the game GRID Autosport used as example):
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/255220/header.jpg
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/255220/logo.png
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/255220/library_hero.jpg
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/255220/library_600x900.jpg (actually 300x450)
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/255220/page_bg_generated.jpg
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/255220/page_bg_generated_v6b.jpg

6
  • Cool! I guess the online version isn't linked from anywhere?
    – Malady
    Nov 1, 2019 at 23:15
  • @Malady From what I can tell, no. I found it after some searching on the web. But I believe it can also be found by inspecting your traffic from the Steam application, using a program like Wireshark, to see the URLs that are requested.
    – Havatra
    Nov 1, 2019 at 23:27
  • @Havatra If 'online' means visible in the Steam store in a normal webbrowser, addons can be used to download art.
    – Mast
    Nov 2, 2019 at 13:11
  • There's also the 'washed out' hero banner used for the steam community pages: cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/225220/…
    – PhonicUK
    Oct 29, 2020 at 19:57
  • @PhonicUK I added the link to the list, thanks!
    – Havatra
    Oct 29, 2020 at 22:00
20

In your default Steam folder, go to appcache, and then librarycache
(e.g. C:\Program Files\Steam\appcache\librarycache):

Steam library icons cache in the Windows 10 explorer

You can sort the files by 'dimensions' to find the icons as shown in your screenshot grouped together.
If that option is not yet available in Windows' Context Menu, then (using Windows 10):

  • right-click the folder,
  • select 'Sort by',
  • go to 'More...', and select 'Dimensions' in the list,
  • click 'OK',
  • right-click the folder again,
  • select 'Sort by', and
  • select 'Dimensions').

A little above half-way the folder the icons you want (300 x 450 px) can be found:

Steam library icons cache in the Windows 10 explorer, sorted by 'Dimensions'

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