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.
Another option is using libpurple compatible chat app, and using steam plugin for it. These haven’t had much developement effort lately, but worked last time I tried them.
Never had an issue. You may want to turn off all of the bells and whistles that cause it to spike CPU when idle though, that might help.
Settings > Library > Enable ‘Low Performance Mode’
Nice tip! This just fixed all the sluggishness that I’ve had for ages.
Still find it strange that the steam linux client performs that badly, you’d think with steam os they’d focus on knocking these bugs out but I’ve had vanishing context menus for years now, even in alt tab view
Ikr?
Steam Big Picture still has a lot of navigation jank, especially in the Steam Input configuration screens.
While I’m sure the move to web tech brought advantages to development, I can’t say it did the User Experience many wonders…
I’ve never had any programs with it tbh
Sluggish UI? I’ve never had issues with the UI being sluggish … Steam Chat always just works for me in the Steam client.
I usually fall back to using the mobile app. Works well.
Good call. I use it sometimes, but I find it has its own quirks: GIFs always fail to play for me.
I don’t have any of these issues. My friends and I only use steam voice chat.
cant say I’ve had any of these problems with the chat. the voice chat does get choppy at times.
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.
