Better Steam Autoupdate, in detail

Steam’s "Always keep this game updated" leaves updates for games you haven’t played lately in a Scheduled list, sometimes for days, and its own schedule setting gives one window for every day. Better Steam Autoupdate is a Windows tray app that starts every pending update inside windows you set for each day of the week, through Steam’s own download engine. It never asks for your Steam password.

It drives Steam through the client’s local debugger when Steam runs with debugging on, the same calls the Downloads page makes, and otherwise falls back to editing the games’ manifest files while Steam is shut down, with a journal so every change is put back. It holds off while you’re playing, on battery or on a metered connection. Version 0.1.0 is built and tested against mocks and real Steam library files, but not yet against a live Steam debugger, and there’s no installer to download yet. The source is MIT-licensed.

• A weekly schedule with as many windows a day as you like, including ones that cross midnight

• Holds off while a game is running, on battery, or on a metered connection

• Two ways to drive Steam: its local debugger, or manifest edits with a restore journal

• Lifts Steam’s download throttle during a window and restores it after

• Optional wake timers that wake the PC two minutes before a window

This is a prototype. This page describes where it’s headed now. It doesn’t promise general availability.

For questions about Better Steam Autoupdate, contact DWMM Holdings with the project name and a short description of what you need. Please don’t send credentials or other sensitive information by email.

dmoore@dwmmholdings.com