Steam is the world’s largest gaming platform for PC. It is home to over 50,000 games as of 2022, and it’s where most PC gamers buy games. Steam shows every game you have purchased and downloaded in the library, which you can install or remove with a few button presses.
As Steam games vary in size, you may wonder where your games are stored. Likewise, you may wonder how big specific games are if you need to uninstall them to reclaim disk space. There are a few ways to check where Steam stores the games in the Steam app or your device’s library files.
Method – How to find where Steam games are stored on Windows
- First, turn on your Windows device.
- Open the “File explorer” app.
- Click the drive your Steam app is saved to. (by default, this should be the C drive)
- Click “Program files (x86).”
- Find Steam in the list of options.
- Press “steamapps.”
- Then click “common.”
Or
- Enter “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common.”
- This should show the Steam games in your library.
Method – How to find where Steam games are stored on a Mac
- Power on your Mac.
- Press “Go” on the Apple bar.
- Mouse to “Go to folder.”
- Search “~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common.”
- This should show which Steam games are installed.
Content list
- Where does Steam store games
- Where are games stored in the Steam app
- How to find Steam games stored on Windows
- How to find Steam games stored on a Mac
- Conclusion
Where does Steam store games
If you are an avid PC gamer, you may have used Steam at one point. Steam hosts 50,000+ games that can be purchased and played in moments. Since you can buy just about any game, your Steam library should have no limit to the number of games it can hold. The only limit would be your device’s storage.
Since gaming PCs should have at least 1+ TB of storage, you may want to know where Steams stores your games so you can manage your library. It is always worth checking your used storage to see how much remaining space you have because you should uninstall some games if your storage is low. In this article, I will discuss all locations and ways you can view where Steam games are stored on different platforms.
Where are games stored in the Steam app
While you can view your installed games in the Steam library, the app doesn’t detail everything you may want to know. Thankfully, the Steam app does detail enough to show you where to go. I will discuss two ways of locating your installed games in the Steam app. First, I will cover where Steam stores your games and how to view the list of currently installed library games.
How to view the Steam storage manager
First, I will cover how to view the Steam storage manager. That would be useful if you want to view every Steam game in one place, showing the general install location. This feature is helpful because it shows how much space it uses and compares it to how much disk space you have left. Also, you can manage games from here and uninstall games that are too big.
- First, open Steam and find the settings.
You must first open the Steam settings, found by clicking “Steam” and selecting “Settings.” Then, you can continue to the next step.
- Next, visit the “download” setting page. Then, click the “Steam library folders” option.
After reaching the Steam settings, click “Downloads” and go to “Steam library folders.” This will take you to the Steam storage manager.
- This is the Steam storage manager; here, you can view every game that is currently installed. It displays information about storage size, the general location of the files, when you last played the game, and how much space you have left.
You can use this page to view where Steam stores games and how many games you have installed. This page is helpful if you want to downsize, as you can consider when you last played games and think if you will remove them.
- Finally, you can use this page to uninstall specific games if you want. You can use this feature by clicking the blank box next to a game and pressing “Uninstall.”
You can use this page to uninstall Steam games. This is useful to save hard drive space as you can view the size of your games. You can remove games by ticking the box next to them and pressing “Uninstall,” in this example, I have chosen “Call of Duty Black Ops III” as the game is over 150 GB.
How to view where Steam stores games in your files using the Steam app
Steam has another app method for viewing the file location on your device. This involves using the Steam library and finding the location using the “Properties” option on a game.
- First, open the Steam app and visit the library.
The first step is to visit the Steam library. This is done by clicking “library” on the navigation bar at the top when you open Steam.
- Next, you must find a game to right-click. After this, press “Properties.”
Right-click a game to find the properties option. The game doesn’t matter if it is stored in the correct location.
- Next, click “Local Files” and press “Browse.”
After reaching the properties page, press “Local Files” to view the Steam options. Choose “Browse” to visit the game’s location on your hard drive.
You can use this to backstep and view where your other Steam games are located. This could be useful if you need to know where the files are for modding: you can click “Common” to view all Steam games installed on your device.
Where are Steam games stored on Windows
After showing where to find the location of Steam games using the app, I will go through how to find the Steam files on each device. All platforms have a line of text you can enter on the file explorer that will take you directly to the Steam files.
For example, you can access your Steam files by pasting the following path into File Explorer on Windows:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common
Here you can view all the games Steam has data for in your library.
Where are Steam games stored on a Mac
- Power on your Mac.
- Press “Go” on the Apple bar.
- Mouse to “Go to folder.”
- Search “~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common.”
- This should show which Steam games are installed.
Likewise, Steam stores data in a similar way on a Mac. You can enter a specific file path by pressing the “Go” and then the “Go to Folder” option on the Mac bar.
Once you arrive here, enter “~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common.”
Source – aspyr
Conclusion
To conclude, Steam stores game data in the same location for all platforms. The method to reach it is similar for Mac and Windows, but it is easier to access using the Steam app as it is universally done in the Steam settings.