Sometimes, The Bests covers the big stuff. Other times, like today, it’s the small stuff.
Confession: I ask a lot of my platforms and services. I don’t just like them to work well, I like them to look good while doing it. So Steam has forever been in my bad books: it works just fine, but even with its recent update, it still looks a little yuck.
But that’s OK. Valve kinda know this, which is why Steam allows users to skin the desktop client and change at least some of its appearance (stuff like the store page and community functions can’t be altered, so most mods just change the main menus and library).
I know lots of people have been using skins for a long time, and may well have built up their own list of favourites, but the purpose of this post is to tell you that you’re wrong, you’ve made a bad decision and you should immediately install the skin I’m about to recommend instead.
Which is Air Skin.
Why? See confession #2: I am very much in love with Google’s current fixation with Material Design (I own a Nexus 6), as it hits the right balance between working well as a UI (ie making things clear and easy to find/use) but also looking nice as well.
Air Skin purposefully (its description straight up says it’s “Embracing Google’s Material Design language”) brings that to Steam, and it looks amazing. Menus are crisp and clear, the text is easy to see and it’s overall just a lot brighter and cleaner than Steam’s main design. It makes Steam look as modern as it feels.
You can download it here.
Got a favourite of your own? List it below!
The Bests are Kotaku’s picks for the best things on (or off) the internet.
Comments
14 responses to “The Best Steam Theme”
I honestly miss the old steam look. http://i.imgur.com/otsZZ.jpg
It was very straight forward and I think you could play chess in the chat window. Well, when friends was working (which it often wasn’t).
You’re not the only one. There is a charm in the older themes (not just Steam) that is lost in these metro-style half arsed efforts.
I concur.
I’ve tried Air, and it looks great, but the Steam Overlay stays light even with having the Dark theme selected, making text hard to see sometimes.
I now use Pixelvision 2, which has quickly become my favourite.
I’m actually a fan of Steam as is; blue and white is one of my least favourite colour combinations, so I think I’ll stick to my dark grey and blue everything for now.
There’s a ton of different colour combinations and themes, mine’s currently Black & Purple
Link: http://i.imgur.com/OPaPjpT.png
Fair enough, that looks a lot nicer, but I’m actually not a fan of material design either outside of phones haha, so I still wouldn’t change. Good to know though that the blue/white isn’t compulsory.
I am glad to see that I am not the only one in these comments who actually despise this flat, pastel look. To me Steam as it is look… OK and does the job fine. Most of these themes really don’t seem to add anything to it.
Lol no, I already have to much “material design” in my face, Metro for steam on the other hand is AMAZING
Those colors remind me of UPlay. Therefore, I hate it.
Reminds me of UPlay AND Apple products.
So it’s basically one step away from satan.
I’d be quite happy if there was a “no theme” option that made it look like every other application on my desktop.
The ‘Metro’ theme brings it into line with Windows 10, which has a similar effect.
This is the first I’ve heard of Steam customisation – probably a result of being a dirty console peasent for so long! Gonna try some of these out!
Welcome to the master race
I find this funny. This looks A LOT like what Uplay looks like…. So……