Steam client grabbing focus when refreshing

Steam has never updated without manually restarting it for me. But every time it starts, it constantly steals focus with each new window it opens, which is very annoying. Previously, it didn’t cause such an inconvenience, it would run quietly in the background, but now until it fully opens everything, you have to wait for it.

Yes I get that too, extra annoying as you sometimes also get that second dialog with the discount announcements, so now you have two windows stealing focus as steam opens up. It's like every program thinks it's the most important program!

Same thing with steam adding itself to windows autostart when you first install it, ever heard of asking first?

Sometimes I want to have steam running, but i don't want to see mesages from chat or that somebody is playing a game. I close it with x and it just runs in the tray without bothering me. Maybe try do just that and see if it will work?

I have the same exact problem since August. It seems to be not connected to the steam app but to the account because when I use my wife's account it never happens. I have tried everything without success, the next step is to reinstall steam but I am too lazy to do that.

Never faced that sorry. Happy New year =)

The issue I am facing recently is that I get a double pop up, whenever somebody launches a game. Like they launch the game 2x at the same moment. Have it with everybody. First thought it might be a card farming thing, that was bugging out on their side. But even friends that only play a couple of games have that. So cant be card based, since they have already the minimium hours in it.

I've had many issues with the "new" (Chrome-based) Steam client, but this isn't one of them.
Could be because I keep the client minimized to tray all the time? 👀

I don't have such problem.
Are you participating in steam Beta. perhaps?

Happens to me at least once daily I guess.

There is a program called Stay Focused, which can prevent applications from stealing focus.
You need to run the program, then click Open Config File.
A File Explorer window will open, now edit the file StayFocused.ini with your prefer editor.
In config section, set mode as whitelist, and in whitelist section, add steam.exe and steamwebhelper.exe.
Finally, restart the program to load new config.

There is one problem, when you return to Steam, you will have a black screen for some seconds.
I think Steam won't start rendering until it in focus.
Bad design, isn't it?

More and more I feel problems are related more to Windows. Firefox for me will half the time open and most itself to the background. Or even if it's in the foreground with act like it's in the background until I click it.

I'm ditching Win 11 for Linux this year.

Yeah, this only happens when starting it, but, it's really frustrating, since you really can't do anything while it steals focus each time. People that don't experience this problem, might have an SSD or better hardware in general, so it fully charges before you can even Alt+Tab. In my case it does it three times:

• When updating my profile.
• When loading the client.
• When loading the home page.

So, it goes to my front screen, three times every time I open it for the first time.