Friendship restored with Steam: Valve has fixed the screenshot manager and all is right with the world

(Image credit: Valve)

My 35-day-long nightmare is over: Valve has quietly restored a critical piece of its screenshot management functionality, and with it a critical piece of my sanity.

Last month when I went to find screenshots of some game or another in Steam I realized that Valve had ditched the old button that took you directly to that game's screenshot folder on the disk, instead replacing it with a "Share" button that let you save images one at a time to a location of your choice. This did not spark joy. Why would I resave a file that I know already exists in a folder on my computer? Why was that folder being hidden from me? What happened to the pure, beautiful, functional simplicity of "Show on Disk?"

Well, it looks like beauty can still exist in the world. Steam's latest update has returned the "Show on Disk" option when you right-click any screenshot in your library, leaping straight to that folder in File Explorer. Excelsior!

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The option coming back surprised me so much I was a little worried I'd somehow just forgotten to right-click for the last month and it had really been there all along. But PC Gamer's Morgan Park confirmed that his build of Steam—which he hadn't yet updated to the latest beta client—did not show that option when he right-clicked a screenshot. After a quick update, the three most beautiful words in the English language appeared before his eyes.

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Steam screenshot show on disk right-click option is back — The return of Show on Disk(Image credit: Valve)

Steam's beta client patch notes seem to indicate the context menu entry returned nine days ago, though Morgan restarted his PC and Steam just two days ago and didn't have the feature. So if you, too, have been mourning quick access to your screenshots, make sure you prompt your client to get completely up to date.

It's a blessed addition, although we at PC Gamer are a tough group to please. After discovering the option's return, my colleague Chris Livingston declared it a half measure:

"Just put the damn folder button back Valve. I ain't got all day to be right-clicking!"

It's true: the new method does require an extra mouse click, and it's not as intuitive as Valve's old folder button. That's potentially whole seconds of your day still going to waste! Personally, I do have all day to be right-clicking, but I still wouldn't mind skipping a step and seeing Show on Disk restored to its former, rightful glory.

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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).