[Tutorial] How to Change the Position of Steam Notifications

[RavenStryker]

Hello all, for some time now I have been wondering how to change the default position of the Steam Notification pop-ups. Why you might ask? Well with myself being a rather heavy Photoshop user and a man of playing many different games I tend to notice that the steam notification pop-up likes to pop up OVER important information. Whether it be Photoshop layers, or maps/ammunition counts for certain games, and that has really started to annoy me. So I took the time to find out how to exactly edit this(and they made it quite easy as well).


1) To start off there are two different areas you can look, and they are as followed(I am assuming you are using Windows 7(but this works for MAC/XP as well), so if not you know how to adjust this):

Standard Steam Skin: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\resource\styles
Customer Steam Skin: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\skins\<SteamSkinName>\resource\styles

Once you have located and opened this folder you will see 'steam.styles' and 'gameoverlay.styles', these are the files that need to be edited in order to move the notification pop-up.



2) Now that you have located these files it is suggested that you make a back-up of them just in case something goes HORRIBLY wrong. Better to be safe than sorry.



3) Open 'steam.styles' with notepad or a preferred text editing program and then press ctrl+f and search for "Notifications" without quotes.



4) Now that you've done that you should see something like the following in the text editing program:

Now you can edit ANY of those to your desires but just for the sake of the tutorial we are only going to worry about two of these options.

Notifications.PanelPosition "BottomRight" // Can be "BottomRight", "BottomLeft", "TopRight", "TopLeft"
Notifications.PanelPosition "TopRight" [$OSX] // the dock is on the bottom for OSX, so instead pop top right like other apps do
Notifications.SlideDirection "Vertical" // Can be "Vertical", "Horizontal", "None" and controls slide effect
Notifications.FadeInTime "0.45" // Controls the time it takes to slide/fade into view
Notifications.FadeOutTime "0.45" // Controls the time it takes to slide/fade out of view
Notifications.DisplayTime "6.0" // Controls the length of time at steady state after fade in and before fade out
Notifications.StackSize "3" // Controls how many panels we will stack before background queuing

5) After you have located the following text, you are going to want to change Notifications.PanelPosition "BottomRight" to one of the following:

• BottomRight(default)
• BottomLeft
• TopRight
• TopLeft

Unfortunately there are no 'TopMiddle' or 'TopCenter' variables, tried them already to no avail.


6) If need be, you can go back into that .style file and edit any of the other notification options available there. They are very self explanatory and can enhance the Steam Notification pop-up experience to make it something you enjoy.


7) Next you are going to open up 'gameoverlay.styles' with the same program. Inside of this file you won't find to much of anything, but there is one more line you need to edit in here so while you are in game it doesn't switch back to the bottom right. The line that you need to edit is:

mostly_black "0 0 0 240"
semi_black "0 0 0 128"
semi_gray "32 32 32 220"
Notifications.PanelPosition "TopRight" // osx has toast in the upper right, but in-overlay should not.

8) After you locate that line(should be right towards the top) all you need to do is change it to the same position as you set the other file to. But now once you change those settings to your likings(and save them) you will have to restart Steam for the change to take effect. When you log back in, you'll notice that the pop-up notifications are where you specified them to be at.


That is it! We have now successfully edited the 'steam.styles' and '' files to change the default location of where the pop-up notifications show up when someone signs on, starts playing a game, makes and announcement/event or even messages you! Give yourself a pat on the back, you deserve it! :thumb:

This is Xi.Cynx, hoping you enjoyed this tutorial, please show your appreciation for my efforts in doing this.

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For added convenience here are a bunch or pre-edited layouts I made for you guys to take out the middle man if you don't feel like editing your own files. Just click on the link for where you want the position and how fast you want it and enjoy.

1. Top Right
   • Top Right(default)
   • Top Right Horizontal
   • Top Right Fast
   • Top Right Fast Horizontal
   • Top Right Slow
   • Top Right Slow Horizontal
2. Top Left
   • Top Left(default)
   • Top Left Horizontal
   • Top Left Fast
   • Top Left Fast Horizontal
   • Top Left Slow
   • Top Left Slow Horizontal
3. Bottom Right
   • Bottom Right(default)
   • Bottom Right Horizontal
   • Bottom Right Fast
   • Bottom Right Fast Horizontal
   • Bottom Right Slow
   • Bottom Right Slow Horizontal
4. Bottom Left
   • Bottom Left(default)
   • Bottom Left Horizontal
   • Bottom Left Fast
   • Bottom Left Fast Horizontal
   • Bottom Left Slow
   • Bottom Left Slow Horizontal

 

[tyler]

oh my god this is awesome

 

[grazr]

It's annoying that you can't do it in the middle. Playing KF i can't use the bottom 2 or top right because of health, ammo and enemy count and playing Civ 5 or SC2 i can't use top left because of pop count and resource management etc.

 

[Rexy]

Damn...now I have a hard time deciding which corner of my screen is the least important.

 

[Micnax]

This is pretty neat, I always hated the notifications popping up when wanting to click on the friends window in the bottom right.

Thanks!

 

[Numerous]

I thought doing this might help, but I realised that I use all my screen corners anyways, and I figured that a better solution would be to have semitransparent notifications. I looked in the settings and there was nothing there, so I used the obvious solution - I whined on SPUF about it.

I mean seriously, go out and do something about the issue when Valve makes so many patches and updates? It's not like HL2:ep3 can wait an extra day, can't it?

Durr.

 

[RavenStryker]

yea I really wish there was a transparency option. I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to add in, but obviously the client has to support it first. I had trouble finding out which corner of the screen I used less, I really wanted it in like the bottom middle or side middle, would've been perfect. But I wound up settling in the top right with it just showing up super fast and then disappearing, giving me just enough time to look.

 

[Wander]

Is there a way to change this game-specific?
Mine are set to the default, right bottom, but for some reason in portal 2 they show up at the right top

 

[RavenStryker]

That happens with Left for Dead as well, I believe they have that build into the game to change it for some reason, when you switch it out with one of the files above it doesn't reset the position in portal 2?

 

[RavenStryker]

Just a little bump for the new(or old) people in case they never saw this.

 

[Boylee]

I KNEW there would be a way to do this. Before the big UI update last year I had my notifications set to appear top-right but I never figured out how to do it with the new steam UI. Thanks a bunch, photoshop plus steam no longer equals irritation.

 

[Pocket]

That happens with Left for Dead as well, I believe they have that build into the game to change it for some reason, when you switch it out with one of the files above it doesn't reset the position in portal 2?

I suspect the Portal 2 implementation is a holdover from the Left 4 Dead engine, since there is no HUD at all in that game to worry about. Still, if they were smart enough to figure out that some games would put important information there, why didn't they think to make the default position change in some third-party games or add the option to customize it for each one?

 

[муѕт]

keeps reverting back..