If anyone else finds Steam’s desktop chat client a bit unreliable on Linux—sluggish UI, finicky context menus, emoji pickers that vanish when you try to click them—there’s a solid alternative worth knowing about.
You can use Steam’s web-based chat directly in your browser at:
https://steamcommunity.com/chat/
Just log in and everything works noticeably smoother: menus behave, emojis are clickable, and the interface feels much more responsive. The only catch is you’ll need to keep a browser tab open for it.
Hope this helps anyone else looking for a more stable Steam chat experience.
Interesting - I’m surprised to hear so many don’t experience this. I’ve used Steam chat on Arch and EndeavourOS for years, and I’ve always found the desktop client to feel a little sluggish, with menus and emoji pickers being particularly finicky. I wonder if it’s related to certain desktop environments or specific setups?
Sluggish? It’s absolute nightmare on Hyprland: whole client crash randomly on opening/closing games, steam in game UI sometimes crash game/stuck/grabs input/does not appear and steam chat just have all those problems incorporated within it, with a bonus inability to correct words (menu with choices does appear, but choosing correct word does nothing).
Dunno, maybe Hyprland is the issue here, for a while it even required workaround in hypr config, to have working sub-menus. But I also tried Gnome and most problems remain. Most probably it still isn’t optimized for wayland.
Yup, that’s essentially been my experience with Steam and chat as well, though it sounds like you might be having an even rougher time than I am. I’m on LXQT, but it’s the only app I’ve used that consistently acts this poorly across different installs and distributions. I’d always assumed it was just a universal “Steam-on-Linux” quirk, but it’s interesting to hear it’s not quite the same for everyone.