In the past, the Steam client and chat looked like this, until the chat update in 2018

Unfortunately, I'm unable to bring back the old profile pic and view friends list text in the bottom right, but bringing back the old the chat is doable.

Close Steam

For Windows, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam

For Linux, go to /home/(user)/.steam/steam

For macOS, go to /Users/username/Library/Application
Support/Steam/Steam.AppBundle/Steam/Contents/MacOS

I haven't tested this with macOS or Linux, but you could try it.

In here, make a new text document, and give it the name and extension "steam.cfg" (This requires show file extensions for known file types to be enabled in folder options if you're using Windows)

Edit this steam.cfg with the text editor of your choice, and copy and paste this into steam.cfg

BootStrapperInhibitAll=enable
BootStrapperForceSelfUpdate=disable

Save the file

Go to the package folder which is in the Steam directory, and rename it to "package2". This folder, although it can be big, can be useful later, and I will tell you something later that you could get from the folder.

Once done, add "-nofriendsui" to the target of the Steam shortcut you use, and launch Steam with the shortcut.

If you've done this properly, and Steam hasn't broken this, you should be able to open the friends list, and see the old UI.


This also works for the last Steam version with the old library UI, and probably many other versions of Steam, if not all other versions of Steam.


Edit: @Plece figured this out. With macOS, you can enter this in terminal to launch Steam with the old friends UI

open /Applications/Steam.app --args -nofriendsui


Maybe it could be made into a script that does that without you needing to copy it into the terminal, but I don't know much about macOS.

Depending on the age of your Steam install, the package folder could range from 100MB, all the way to multiple gigabytes.

This folder could contain every Steam update your client has downloaded, and I'm actually looking for various Steam client versions that I can't find that could be in your package folder.

I'm looking for any Steam client before April 28th. If you have files that could be it in your package folder, please send them over to me.

It's a good idea to keep these files backed up, and keep a VM around to download newer client versions just in case you ever need to go to a certain version in the future, or need to test something in a specific client.

When you need to upload a full Steam client, remove userdata, config, appcache, steamapps, and the ssfn files, unless you want to give some random your account info. Some ssfn files are hidden, so you'll need to enable show hidden files in folder options to see them if you're using Windows.