• Valve has rolled out a number of improvements following a unification of its codebase.
• The experience for users across the desktop and mobile apps as well as Steam Deck has been unified.
• The big item is the overhaul of the overlay which has improved functionality and new features.

Like us, you may have noticed that Steam received an update today while preparing your gaming station for the long weekend. This update is rather substantial and gives us something we’ve been begging for for a while – a unified appearance.

With this update Steam brings visual and usability improvement to all users whether they’re on desktop, Steam Deck or Mobile. Much of this work, however, isn’t visible as Valve has tried to unify its codebase so that it can more easily deploy features, fixes and updates to all versions of the software.

One of the bigger highlights is the overhauled in-game overlay.

“It’s got a brand-new user interface, adding new utility and allowing for more customizability. There is a new toolbar, giving you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game – friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more. We’ve picked a few overlay windows to show by default, and you can pick and personalize the pieces of content you’d like to see in your own overlay – settings are saved between games,” reads an announcement.

The new overlay can be fully customised to include notes and these notes can also pinned over the game you’re playing for extra information. These notes are cloud based and as such they will follow you across devices.

In fact, most elements of the overlay can be pinned to the game screen including the browser. For games with puzzles that require external maps, this could be a game changer.

There are smaller updates as well such as how notifications can be customised, being able to easily access your download queue and more. It all just looks very swish and makes using Steam a bit more of a joy.

These changes are live now so check them out and play around a bit with the overlay which has admittedly, been a feature of the platform we’ve never really paid much attention to.