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Questions About Steam Mobile App Notifications

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Dronak

I noticed that the Steam mobile app (at least for Android) has an option to enable push notifications. I usually don't use such notifications on my phone, but thought that in the case of the summer sale with limited time deals, it might be worth it at least for now. But since I'm not too familiar with notification settings and such, I'm hoping that some people here could provide info on a few things.

(1) Background connectivity options for using notifications are "Stay connected to Steam in background" and "Use push notifications in background". Can someone explain a bit more about how these differ in what they do and the effects (notifications) they create?

(2) How much battery drain does using notifications cause? This might depend on which setting you use above, but I'm basically looking for how much faster the battery drains -- is it obviously sucking power, or is it slow enough that it won't affect typical usage of the phone?

(3) How often do you typically get notifications? I'm guessing it'll be more now during a big sale with changing deals than on a typical day. Basically I'm wondering if it's going to be so much that it'll get annoying. Once a day is certainly no problem. A few a day, probably fine. Once an hour might be a pain though.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

13 years ago*

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4 Comments
roguesas

You get notification if someone talks to you.

13 years ago
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Dronak

Thanks. I guess that's useful if you chat a lot on Steam from your phone, but I rarely do, so I could just turn notifications off if that's all they do.

13 years ago
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godprobe

On Android at least, there's a new (to me) setting under Settings > Steam Preferences
Until a few days ago (as far as I know), on my phone, this always led to a notice saying something along the lines of the preferences feature not being available yet.
Now it has two checkbox options under the following message:
Steam would like to send push notifications to your mobile devices regarding sales and special announcements. You can choose the types of messages you would like to receive below.

  • Allow notifications to be pushed to your device
  • Allow notifications about Steam sales

IIRC, they were unchecked by default. I turned them on not long after the summer sale started and have had Steam running on my phone in the background for about half the time of the sale. I've only gotten one sales notice so far (about the Summer Sale itself), so I think they're just trying it out right now.

I haven't noticed any change in battery consumption from the same consumption running the app in the background had before (which isn't much for me, YMMV).

13 years ago
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Dronak

I'm not sure I looked there before (I haven't had the Steam app for too long), but I do see the same settings now as you listed here -- to allow notifications, and to allow sales notifications. If it's mostly a test right now, it may not be as useful as I thought. To clarify on the connection though, you allow Steam to stay connected in the background? I put mine to only use push notifications in the background, thinking that letting Steam stay connected would use more power, only after I saw something about sale notifications pop up. I missed the details of that though, so I'm not sure what it said or offered exactly.

13 years ago
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Closed 13 years ago by Dronak.