Steam Client Beta Improves Big Picture Mode, Several Linux Enhancements

Written by Michael Larabel in Valve on 9 September 2026 at 08:27 PM EDT. 10 Comments
VALVE
Tonight Valve released a big Steam client beta update with a number of new features and fixes.

Steam's Big Picture Mode has seen a number of improvements with this beta update. There is a new "Big Art Mode" option for the home screen as well as a new personal calendar on the "Recommended Tab" of the home screen.

Steam Big Picture Mode


Steam Big Picture Mode also added a new screensaver feature, including the ability to load custom screensavers.

Outside of Big Picture Mode, the Steam client start-up performance is improved in general, improved CPU performance at runtime for Steam Input, and many bug fixes.

The Steam client beta for Linux has improved download speeds on high latency connections, the SteamOS compatibility dialogs will now show in the desktop UI when installing games not verified for that hardware, and the desktop Linux UI will also show the SteamOS unsupported dialog when installing games that are known to not work with Proton. The Steam beta also improves its Linux distribution information collection for the Steam Survey to be more accurate. The SteamRT3 experimental beta has also seen several fixes.

More details on today's feature-packed Steam beta update via SteamCommunity.com.
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