How To Disable Steam Auto Updates | The Easiest Methods

There are a whole bunch of reasons why you might want to disable Steam’s automatic game updates. For me, I used to hate seeing my ping go through the roof when playing a competitive game of CS:GO. Other people just don’t have the internet capacity to be downloading GBs of files every couple of weeks. Whatever the reason, we understand how annoying Steam auto-updates can be.

Whilst Steam doesn’t offer an official “turn off auto-updates button”, there are a number of different ways to stop games from randomly updating at the worst possible times.

So, with that in mind, the following will be a short guide on how to disable Steam updates. Despite not being able to fully stop the updates altogether, we can dictate how and when the updates occur.

Let’s jump into it.

Force Steam To Update Games On Launch

Whilst this won’t physically stop your game from updating, it will ensure that it won’t update whilst you’re playing. Here’s how to force Steam to update games on launch:

1. Start off by opening up Steam
2. Once opened, navigate to your games library – found on the menu at the top of the Steam hub
3. Find the game you want to alter, right-click it, and select “properties” from the drop-down menu
4. On the popup window, select “updates” from the tabs at the top
5. Next, under the “automatic updates” drop-down menu, select “only update this game when I launch it“
6. Close the properties window and the method is complete

Setting Auto Update Time Restrictions

The next thing you can do to help with annoying game updates is to manually set time restrictions on when Steam can update the games. Here’s the simple step by step guide on how to set time restrictions on updates:

1. Once again, start by opening Steam
2. Next, navigate to the “view” tab from the horizontal menu at the top of Steam
3. From the drop-down menu, simply select the “settings” option
4. Once in settings, find and click the “downloads” tab from the left-hand menu
5. Inside, you should see a “download restrictions” section amongst the options that appear. Tick the “only auto-update games between” option
6. In the two drop-downs found below, you can enter the exact times you wish to restrict the updates to
7. You can also set the amount of bandwidth that the download consumers too

If you want to almost completely stop updates from occurring, we recommend using an extremely obscure time (when your PC is switched off) and setting the bandwidth to its lowest possible setting.

Disable Steam Starting On Startup

Lastly, whilst this won’t stop Steam from updating, it will stop Steam loading on Windows launch and can save you precious internet consumption by doing so. Here’s how to stop Steam starting on launch:

1. Like always, start by loading Steam
2. Navigate to the “settings” menu, which can be found in the “View” tab at the top menu on Steam
3. Inside the settings tab, locate “interface” and select it from the options available
4. Inside interface, you should see a ticked box labeled “Run Steam when my computer starts“
5. Simply untick this box, and close the settings window

Related Pages

Despite Steam being one of the most popular gaming platforms out there, it still comes with a whole host of bugs and issues that can drive gamers insane. Below, we’ve listed some of our most popular troubleshooting pages:

• How to install DLC on Steam
• How to add friends on Steam
• Steam & Chromebooks
• How to share games on Steam
• How to move Steam games to another drive
• Steam Not Opening?
• Missing file privilege Steam error

Conclusion

So, there you have it, our comprehensive guide on how to disable (restrict) Steam’s automatic game updates. Whilst you can’t exactly switch auto-updates off altogether, we did figure out some good ways to stop them from interrupting your gaming experience. Ultimately, whatever happens, your games will need updating at some stage in time. However, if there’s a game you rarely play and you’d rather update it on your own terms, these are great ways to do that.

Any questions regarding the article, feel free to leave us a comment in the section below and we’ll answer any questions as soon as we can. Better still, you can now head on over to our Community Hub where you can discuss everything PC & gaming related with like-minded individuals.