How To Hide or Unhide Games In Steam? [Easiest Steps]

Playing games on Steam is great fun until you gather a large number of games in your account. It becomes challenging to find your favorite game from a huge list in the steam library. In a recent update, Steam addressed this issue and added an option for hiding or unhiding the games from the library. Apart from that, you can also hide game activity on steam from friends.

Hiding the games in the Steam library helps to manage the lists. It is not a very prominent feature and has not reached the masses. You can organize your games in a significant way by utilizing this feature in the Steam library. Hide the titles that you never play, and boom, your list is organized and clean.

But a question arises in many people that why hiding a game and not going for deleting it? Well, it all depends on the intentions with those titles. If you are not playing those games but have a plan to play them soon, hiding them saves your time installing them again when you need them.

In this step-by-step guide, we will walk you through the steam library’s hiding and unhiding process. So, it becomes easy for you to manage the games by hiding them or unhide those games. First, we will discuss the hiding process.

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How To Show Games In Steam

How to Hide Games in Steam Library?

Hiding the game on Steam is super easy if you are already familiar with its user interface. On an updated Steam application, it becomes easier to hide the game. This guide is the best resource for people who do not know how to hide games in Steam.

How to hide games in steam
  1. Open the Steam application on your computer. (Go here if steam doesn’t open on PC).
  2. On the main screen, look for the “Library” and open it.
  3. Once inside, you will see a list of the games that you have installed on Steam.
  4. Look for the game that you want to hide in the list.
  5. Right-click on that game and select the “Manage” option.
  6. In the drop-down menu, choose “Hide this game.”
  7. It will instantly move the game to the hidden games list.

Related: How to use Steam Remote Play?

How To Unhide Games In Steam Library

You are already familiar now with the hiding process in the Steam library. Unhiding on the Steam library is even easier than the hiding process and requires few clicks to achieve the target. Three are two methods to unhide the games in the Steam library.

Method 1: Unhiding Games In Steam

This method is straightforward and requires zero to no technical expertise.

unhide steam 1
  1. Open Steam application client.
  2. Now look for the “View” and click on it.
  3. In the next step, select “Hidden Games.”
  4. Once inside the hidden games list, you can see all the hidden games on the Steam client.
  5. From there, you can unhide any game by choosing it.
  6. Right-click on that particular game and click “Manage.”
  7. Now select “Remove from Hidden,” and Steam will remove the game from the hidden list.
unhide steam 3

Related: Windows Cannot Find Steam.exe

Method 2: How to show Games In Steam

There is good news if you don’t want to search from the long list of hidden games. This method only works if you already remember the name of the game that you wanted to unhide. Let’s get straight to the methods without any further delays.

unhidesteam2
  1. Open the Steam client on your computer.
  2. Now go directly into the “Library.”
  3. Once inside the library, utilize the “Search” function under the “Home.”
  4. Inside the search box, type the name of the game.
  5. Now click on the “Plus icon” on the left of the Hidden.
  6. Once you did that, the game will unhide and pop up in the library.

The success in this method has a direct link with the remembrance of the game name. However, for many users, the first method is easy and convenient.

Why Hiding Games on Steam?

This is a valid question that why hiding the games on Steam when you can simply remove them. Most gamers already know the answer because they have gone through this situation more often when they have many games.

A simple answer to this question is that “hiding is more convenient than uninstalling Steam because it is entirely reversible”. At times you feel the urge to play a game that you previously installed but not playing more often. It is better to unhide a hidden game than installing it from scratch, especially with several Gigabyte setup.

Even you can avoid all the hassle of hiding the games by adding the games to favorites that you play regularly. In this way, you can easily access them from your “favorite games” rather than finding them from the list of games in the library. Besides the easy accessibility to the favorite games, you can easily find other playable games without forgetting them in the hidden list.

Related: Here is a quick way to fix steam missing file privileges error.

It is worth noting that you cannot recover it as you do with the unhide process if you remove the game. So keep in mind the removing is irreversible while hiding is reversible. Once you remove the game from the Steam client, it remains in the downloaded games list, so either you have to remove or hide it from the downloaded list. And, you can solve the steam download stopping issue if you are facing this problem while downloading games from Steam.

Here are quick fixes for Steam downloading slowly.

How to Uninstall games from Steam library

Uninstalling is an entirely different approach compared to the hiding games on Steam. You can access the games when they are hidden, but you can’t access them once they are uninstalled. Keep in mind to remove the games from the computer before removing them from the Steam library. Otherwise, you have to remove games manually by scavenging the files in the SSD or hard drives. You can remove games from Steam in two different ways.

Method# 1

In this method, you will learn how to uninstall games from the Steam library in an easier way.

  1. Open the Steam account on your PC.
  2. Go straight to “Library.”
  3. Search for the game you want to remove and select it.
  4. Right-click that title and select “Manage.”
  5. In the final step, select “Remove from Account,” A dialogue box will open for the confirmation.
  6. Confirm the warning that and boom, you have successfully uninstalled that game from the library.

There are certain games like your paid and gift games that you cannot remove from the library. The only solution is to hide them.

Related: Here is a quick way to change Steam account name.

Method# 2

This method does the same process but operates differently. It’s always better to know more ways to do a thing. Some people may want to try this method if the first one is not working for them.

  1. Open Steam client.

2. Click on “Help” and then select “Steam Support.”

remove steam game 1

3. Now select the game you want to delete. You can use the search box for quickly accessing the game by searching it by name.

remove steam game

4. Now click on “I want to remove this game permanently from my account.”

remove steam game 2

5. In the next few steps, Steam shows more options. It will offer any bundles if purchased with this game or your related purchases with this particular game.

6. Now click on “OK” to remove the game permanently.

7. Again a confirmation box will appear “If you ever want to play the game again, you will have to repurchase it.”

remove steam game 3

8. Confirm the dialogue box to remove the game.

Note: If you have recently bought that game, then you can ask for the refund of game on steam. Removing the games from Steam won’t remove your achievements and playtime. This information remains on your Steam profile.

Related: Where are Steam Screenshots Saved on Windows 11?

Perks of hiding games in Steam library

When you hide games in the Steam library, it doesn’t decrease the number of games you own in Steam. If you feel that your setup is cluttered and a massive list of the game is piling up, then you can hide the unnecessary titles from the library. Only a few clicks of the mouse can do this job.

But if you are reluctant to uninstall the game, then there are certain downsides to this whole process. You have to repurchase those games again if you ever want to play them. So hiding the games is a better choice.

Can teammates and friends see the hidden game on Steam?

Adding privacy to the list of your Steam games is not very difficult. If you want to keep your library visible only to you and prevent friends from spying on it, you can follow these easy steps.

  1. Inside your Steam account on the top right corner, click on your profile.
  2. Go to the option, “View my Profile.”
  3. Now click on the “Edit Profile” and go to the edit menu.
  4. From the menu, go straight to the “My Privacy Settings.”
  5. Inside the privacy settings, choose “Game Details” status and change it from “Friends Only” to “Private.”
  6. Now your friends cannot see your games, and your achievements and wish list will remain hidden.

Conclusion

This is all for the easy-to-follow and straightforward guide on how to unhide games in Steam. Now you certainly able to hide, unhide and uninstall games in the Steam library. You can either remove them or keep them hidden; it all depends on your preference. The steam layout may seem confusing for new gamers, but it gets better when used.

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Muhammad Kashif

M. Kashif is a published author at Gaming Expert.net. He is a tech enthusiast, a passionate gamer and loves to try new gadgets and writing about games and technology events.