A beautiful, lightweight Steam game launcher that lives on your Windows desktop.
- 🖼️ Steam Deck-style game cards — full artwork, proper 460×215 header ratio, smooth hover glow
- ⭐ Favourites — pin your most-played games to the top with a gold glow border, persists across restarts
- 🔍 Live search — instantly filter your entire library as you type
- 💾 Remembers everything — window position and size are saved on close and restored on next launch
- 🚀 Starts with Windows — automatically launches on login, always ready
- ⚡ Loads from local cache — reads artwork directly from Steam's own cache on your hard drive, no internet needed after first run
- 🟣 Custom gamepad icon — shows in File Explorer, taskbar and Alt+Tab
- ✕ Red close button — turns red on hover so you always know what you're clicking
- 🪟 Transparent, borderless window — floats cleanly over your wallpaper
- 🔄 Refresh button — rescan your library any time
| Main View | Favourites | Search |
|---|---|---|
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 |
 |
Head to the Releases page and download the latest SteamWidget.exe.
It's a single self-contained file — no installer, no .NET required on your PC.
Just double-click SteamWidget.exe. That's it.
First run on a new PC? Windows SmartScreen may show a blue warning because the app isn't code-signed. Click "More info" → "Run anyway" — this is safe and only happens once.
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Launch a game | Click any game card |
| Favourite a game | Click the ★ star on the card |
| Search | Type in the search box at the top |
| Move the widget | Click and drag the title bar |
| Resize | Drag the bottom-right corner |
| Refresh library | Click the ⟳ button |
| Close | Click the ✕ button (turns red on hover) |
SteamWidget stores two small files locally on your PC — nothing is sent anywhere:
| File | Location | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Window settings | %APPDATA%\SteamWidget\window.json |
Position and size |
| Favourites | %APPDATA%\SteamWidget\favourites.json |
Your starred game IDs |
| Image cache | %APPDATA%\SteamWidget\icons\ |
Downloaded artwork (only for games not already in Steam cache) |
- C# / WPF (.NET 8, Windows)
- XAML for UI
- Reads Steam library from local
.acfmanifest files and Windows Registry - Artwork loaded from
Steam\appcache\librarycache\— your local disk
- Windows 10 or Windows 11
- Steam installed
- At least one game installed via Steam
Pull requests are welcome! If you find a bug or have a feature idea, open an Issue.
Ideas for future features:
- Last played / playtime sorting
- Category / tag filtering
- Mini compact mode
- Custom background/theme colors
- Non-Steam game support
MIT License — free to use, modify and share.
Made with ❤️ for gamers who like their desktop clean but their games close.