How to Hide Games on Steam Family Sharing

If you share your Steam library using Family Sharing, you may want to restrict access to certain games while still allowing access to others. This guide covers multiple methods to hide, limit or fully block family members from viewing or launching games in your shared Steam library.

A Primer on Steam Family Sharing

Before diving into the steps around hiding games, let‘s quickly cover how Family Library Sharing works for some helpful context.

What Does Steam‘s Family Sharing Feature Allow?

• Remotely share your Steam game library with other users
• Authorize up to 5 accounts to access your library
• Each member sees only the games you‘ve chosen to share
• Members can earn achievements and keep individual game saves
• Only one shared library can be accessed at a time

Key Limitations

• Shared users are kicked once library owner plays a game
• Some games have restrictions and cannot be shared
• Up to 10 authorized device deauthorizations per year

So in summary, it‘s a handy feature for sharing games across Steam accounts, with reasonable sharing limits. According to Steam statistics, over 19% of surveyed users leverage family sharing, indicating it‘s a popular library management capability.

Setting Individual Games to Private

The easiest approach to start selectively hiding games is to set titles to Private in your Steam library.

Here are the steps:

1. Launch Steam and access your game library
2. Right click on a game and select Properties
3. Click the General tab > Game details
4. Change the privacy dropdown to Private

Once set to private:

• The game no longer shows for others viewing your library
• Hides from friends seeing what you‘re currently playing
• But the game still functions if accessed directly by family sharing members

So setting games to private acts more as a visibility filter rather than completely blocking access. It‘s useful for quickly hiding potentially embarrassing game titles from friends!

Testing Game Privacy Settings

To validate your private setting, sign out of Steam and sign back in using a shared family member‘s account. Alternatively, view your profile logged in as another user. Verify the private games no longer show.

The same privacy settings apply across platforms, hiding private Steam games whether accessing the library via desktop, mobile or the Steam Deck console.

Removing Games from Shared Family Library

If you wish to fully prevent access to certain games, removing them from your Family Library group is more restrictive. Access the sharing settings:

Steam > Settings > Family > Manage Family Library Sharing

From here you can completely block sharing of select games. Removed games will no longer display at all. Family accounts also cannot directly launch blocked games.

Attempting to Launch a Removed Shared Game

Signing in as a family member after removing a shared game produces the following result when attempting to run it:

So this method serves as a complete block if your goal is preventing a family member from accessing a game.

Alternative Option: Family View

Steam‘s Family View setting acts as a broader content filter, limiting visibility for certain types of games across your whole library.

Access it via: Steam > Settings > Family

With Family View you mark certain games as visible only when adult filters are disabled. Useful for hiding many adult-only titles at once rather than individually.

Downsides are family members still see these games in library results, plus have to switch filtering on/off to view them. It lacks the granular control of the Private and Remove sharing options above.

Third Party Tools

Developers have created free third party tools like Family Share Manager that add automation and management capabilities around Steam‘s family sharing feature.

Benefits include:

• Set default visibility rules newly added games
• Automate private status when adding adult-only titled games
• Batch edit visibility of multiple games

Helpful for larger libraries where changing settings title-by-title would be tedious.

Comparison of Hiding Options

So in summary:

• For a quick visibility filter, set games to private
• To completely block access, remove games from the family library
• Enable Family View for mass filtering more adult-oriented content

Caveats Around Hiding Shared Steam Games

While the options above are effective at limiting access, be awarevisibility and play data may still show in certain areas:

When set to private:

• Family can directly access the game exe if location is known
• Your play activity may appear in other linked services like Discord

When removed from family library:

• Family members currently playing the game retain access until closed
• Your playtime and achievements can still display publicly on your profile

So some minor traces still persist. But combined these options provide pretty robust control to hide games from Steam Family Sharing as needed.

In Conclusion

Sharing your treasured Steam library adds great value, but chances are there are some titles better kept away from prying eyes!

Follow the settings outlined above based on your priorities:

• Quickly filter out unwanted game visibility ⇢ Set to Private
• Completely block game access ⇢ Remove from Shared Library
• Broadly limit adult content ⇢ Enable Family View

You dictate the experience. So toggle and tweak these access rules to share a thoughtful library that makes your friends and family‘s day!

What other methods have you found useful for managing Steam Family Sharing? Let me know in the comments!