Steam Client on Desktop is getting a HUGE update :-)

Looks prefect.

Looks good but... Bloatware.

I wrote a lengthy opinion on the whole deal but it ended being too long and too sour and even useless, so I'm saving you from a bloatware answer.

I just got an update, the design looks much better

God going through some of the comments, people just want to be negative all the time. -_-

Is there any way to get rid of that red banner that says Windows 7 won't be supported in 2024? I know already.

Still waiting for them to add so you can sort by user reviews in library.

Always nice to be able to combine steam review and actual number of reviews.

I updated to beta version and it runs much better, but the notifications are annoying. Im getting "this product on your wishlist is on sale" a lot. I hope you can have control over this

Wow, the new disk selection screen when installing is so much better, actually great update

So some changes i barely notice... huge :D

Worked on a little on the new overlay: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1099693922026008666/1101636228358623262/Screenshot_2023-04-29_002723.png
Useful and clean

The new graphics/font on the client is even better

In-Game Overlay, including
The new toolbar gives you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game – friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more.

you could already do these with the overlay.

The notes feature actually sounds like a great idea, and if they make the screenshot manager more usable without having to go full-screen that would be really nice.
I just hope they don't destroy the performance, trying to open a guide in the middle of a game already feels like it might crash my laptop sometimes, good thing that the extra RAM I bought should be arriving next week.

Took a look at the new features, but I'm way too sleepy for an in-depth check because I did not do that.

pinning a note to the screen with opacity options is good as option, highly depends on a game if it's useful.
The in-client browser actually got a lot better with more options, like reorganizing tabs, closing tab with M3, maybe even ctrl-T works. Standard stuff that were missing. Also, it's a lot faster?
My big issue is that now I get all kinds of trash notifications like games going on a shallow sale I don't care about, because it spams notifications like the steam app does. Also - notification settings is not in beta yet. Yay? :D

if Steam Deck weren't popular, would they even bother updating?

To be honest I was not aware of any of these changes, I just hit the update tab because I don't want to be annoyed all the time by this.
They could work a bit further on Steam Link, the input lag sometimes is awful from the Ethernet to Wifi at 2.4GHZ. I know they recommend 5GHZ but knowing Steam they could improve a lot in many aspects of this software.

So, the update just came out (of beta) and I don't see much difference in resource usage (it seems to be using less ram overall, though), and it's significantly snappier than before, which I honestly didn't expect (quite the opposite). I don't know how low end pcs will fare, but this update seems like a success to me, from the performance to the new look, which is kinda nice.

Edit: in-game overlay is also pretty nice. Not bad, Steam. Not bad.

Edit²: I realized I sounded like I was using the beta before, but I wasn't. My comparison is with the default previous version/public release.

Looks like we can't print receipts after key activation anymore, although they're now sent via email - which is new. Not sure how to feel about this, since with bunch of receipts you can, or at least could, prove/claim ownership of Steam account.

The in-game overlay no longer displays the remaining battery, that's about the only annoying thing I've found so far, other than that it seems like a nice update so far... although it is taking me a bit to get used to the fact that the notifications in the corner of the screen look different now, I got extremely used to how they used to look during the past decade.

As someone with an old PC I can report that there isn't much a performance difference with the updated client.

I'd really prefer if there was a minimalist version of Steam. Just a list of games with the option to install, play, or uninstall. I don't need most of the bells and whistles.

My biggest problem is that they removed the option to use skins for the client. I guess since it's basically a Chrome-browser now it's harder to implement - but there is absolutely no word about that in the patch note...