hello

Good xd
Just forget to ask @Wiawyr what release he was using .....
july and april confirmed and may too so far
little drawback : april release, alt tab remove your status of game playing , just leave you online sometimes.

Originally posted by MrBAG:

may 30 2023 release
-nofriendsui works. Frends can see i am playing. I can see friends playing
Miss pasting pictures in chat so much

hello

Can you play a game please and also send a chat to one of your friends and answer him.
so we can have 2 versions working , april and may

Originally posted by DSDDukeNukem:

Hi guys. I've read your messages. So if I understood, I launch my steam with -nofriendsui behind -vgui, then I also have to remove that package thing somewhere (i don't know the location), and the steam chat will work again with july 28th version, at the price of not seeing what my contact playing, correct?

hello

No make a new steam shortcut using -nofriendsui (steam.exe -nofriendsui) and rename the forlder called package inside steam whatever you want(eg packagesave), i suggest you to create a new one with the same name use before (package) also and use the correct steam.cfg to block update and it should work,
it will be a good test to see if it work under your july steam release.
i confirmed it worked on my april release with some drawbacks.
So please do the change and come back for a feedback please

Originally posted by ☺ TLM ☺- New UI is CRAP !!:

There might be a fitting Addon that can redirect traffic - in some of them you can even specify individual urls etc... those addons intercept url calls and redirect them, if that is the correct way of saying it. I think if you figure how to get addons into the Chromium, then Valve cannot do anything about it. The Keyword for those addons is redirect. There are quite a lot.

Also not sure if it might help you, but you could actually use logs to track down what steam is actually doing. I just saw those console commands :
-fs_log - Log file system accesses
-fs_logbins - Log the binaries we load during operation

from https://gist.github.com/davispuh/6600880

You are probably much deeper into this and already knew about everything i posted, if that is the case then I am sry.

Hello

Sorry didn't took attention to your link ,
Interresting , no need to check bootstrapper and dll so and we have also some form of description of theirs functions

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

Originally posted by bidulless:

Hello

Been honest with you, i did not tested the chat myslef - just sent a message few seconds and waiting an answer - but renaming package to whatever you want is safe ( i created a empty folder package also just to remind me the real folder structure ). But chat in bigpicture mode won't work anymore and some other minor issues that need to be discovered.

I had to edit my message a bit, things changed from how I initially thought they were working. I've also done that with manually making a new package folder.

hello

Aye it's still a good thing to have an empty folder with the same name anyway just in case of. Ok, chat is working , can send and recieve message from friends
and may be some other drawbacks like you showed in your post.

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

Would like to add a slight refinement to these directions, as it was initially unclear for me but is working now. Under Program Files (x86) -> Steam, you literally need to rename the "package" folder to anything else, i.e.; "package2". Adding the "-nofriendsui" part is correct.

The way I have this working is being logged into Steam via my browser for chat. You cannot talk to anyone via the client itself in this manner, including joining group chats and sending direct messages. But with this setup, your status will correctly update itself for when you are playing games or not.

However, the package folder is also where you should have the tmp file, which makes me nervous about using this. Anyone's thoughts?

Hello

Been honest with you, i did not tested the chat myslef - just sent a message few seconds and waiting an answer - but renaming package to whatever you want is safe ( i created a empty folder package also just to remind me the real folder structure ). But chat in bigpicture mode won't work anymore and some other minor issues that need to be discovered.

Originally posted by silly:

Originally posted by bidulless:

hello

one user got us the solution @Zach Fett
launch steam with -nofriendsui and package folder renamed to whatever you want till you are using steam.cfg blocking update.
There is a drawback; it does not work anymore with the bigpicture mode

It actually works! Thank you so much for sharing this solution.

Hello

No need to thanks me but user @Zach Fett who found the solution
Now we have 2 solutions : bigpicture mode or this one and no clue how long both will stay.
we made some form of progress by knowing stuff like clientcom.js but we still need to find a way to somehow override the use of downloaded js in favor of the file on our hdd.

i wonder if ws://127.0.0.1:27060/clientsocket/ if not the same as https://steamloopback.host because as i can't find any trace of it into my log and if it's the same it means there is no control done on backend side but everything is done locally on client side with the help of downloaded js from steam cdn.
And last remark : it can be good to check the bootstrapper and some steam dll to see what other kind of interresting switch we still can find into them because it's not something documented on steam web developper page.

hello

one user got us the solution @Zach Fett
launch steam with -nofriendsui and package folder renamed to whatever you want till you are using steam.cfg blocking update.

There is a drawback; chat does not work anymore with the bigpicture mode and some other minor disadvantage that need to be find like you do not see anymore what games your friends are playing , and another one on the same kind directly under steam ( right part of steam on any game as it show you disconnected )
It also working in overlay mode.

Originally posted by TiberiumFusion:

Tenfoot (old Big Picture mode) is in all of the Jan 2023 - May 2023 clients, hidden behind the -oldbigpicture switch. If you want to replicate the success I had with tenfoot that I mentioned in my previous post, you need to strip the illegal request headers from all http requests that the steam client makes through cef.

Hello

No need , as i wrote yesturday, it's allready working under bigpicture for my april release without changing anything and there is nothing we can do on our side by changing the friends.js as the test is done on backend side trought cef or may be a way too much that it's does not worth the try
Someone posted a screenshot showing that the old pure vgui chat client was still working , user @mv
You were talking about files in memory and why not the steam htlm cache %AppData%\Local\Steam\htmlcache?
all calls are saved into data1 i guess there is an index for the corresponding saved data with for their hash name on cache after but may be some could be salted as the vlink file used here and need to be decrypted with a key....
https://steam-chat.com/chat/clientui/?l=french&cc=FR&build=1682708537&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamloopback.host
ok so it's been sent to team .... f.... this is my client release build number ...
not all is on friends.js, some stuff are downloaded from their cdn check data_1, it's not salted and you will find a link to clientcom.js, interresting file because it's downloaded and executed on the steam client ....check part "GetClientInfo" inside the js xd
some files saved with a hashed named are also compressed file ( gz file format) that can be open using 7z (html,css), many image on different format, png, webm,jfif,etc....

hello

Made another test
now we know that friends.js is controlling the steamchat connection for the normal little chat windows.
i decided to completly remove friends.js and launched steam again :
no connection to chat and no popup of the chat client as before but the big picture was still fully functional and same result under overlay mode.
last test
replace friends.js by the current one and same result ,no popup, bigpicture ok and overlay same as screenshot
/----------
Made 2 others tests
using the -oldbigpicture with my currents friends,js and the december one.

the old bigpicture is still actif in april release but none of the frriends.js, even in bigpicture and overlay are working, i always get the steam logo of a waiting connection under bigpicture mode. So no connection was made in this case.
It confirmed me that the steam version is harvested by the backend trough cef steamwebhelper.exe and not from throught js
i am a bit surprise how a december release can still work, may be because it does not use cef steamwebhelper.exe for the chat...