How to Change Game Download Location on Steam

Steam is one of the most popular apps among PC gamers as you can find any major game on the Steam store. It simplifies the download, installation and management of users’ favorite games through its user interface.

Whenever the Steam user wants to download a game, Steam uses the app’s default installation directory to download and install the game. this location is C:Program Files (x86)Steam default. Here comes the problem, as most of the users will not have enough space in C drive, especially for the games that take up a large amount of storage, for example, 50 to 100 GB.

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To overcome this problem, Steam allows the user to change the download and installation location of the games using the application. Users can have multiple library folders and choose the installation location while downloading the games. With Steam, you don’t need to worry about re-downloading an entire game. The latest Steam update allows a user to completely move a game to another location without losing any data related to the game and avoiding the process of downloading it again.

In this article, we have discussed the steps to change game download/install location on Steam and how to move existing Steam games from one folder to another game folder on Steam.

Change Steam Game Download/Install Location

1. Open the Vapor request.

2. Go to Vapor at the top of the application window and select Settings.

3. Select the downloads tab in the left pane Settings window.

4. On the right side, click STEAM LIBRARY FOLDERS located below Content Libraries.

5. You will see the storage manager window. Click on the ‘+’ icon here to add a new folder to download/install games.

6. In the Add a new Steam library folder, select option let me choose another location in the dropdown menu. Click on Add.

7. Here, you can select a new location. you can use the Dropdown menu to change the units.

8. Navigate to the folder of your choice and highlight it. Click on Select.

Note: You also can create a new folder navigating to the location where you want the new folder to be and clicking New folder.

9. The added folder will now appear in the Storage manager.

10. Optionally, you can make this new folder the default so that all future downloads/installs will take place in this folder.

11. To make the folder the default, select the folder and click the three horizontal dots associated with this folder and choose the option make default.

12. Close Storage Manager and click OK usually Settings window.

You now have a new download/install location for games on Steam. If the folder has been set as default, all new games will be installed in that folder. Otherwise, Steam will ask you to choose a location when you want to download/install a new game if there are multiple library folders.

Move Existing Steam Games to Another Steam Games Folder

Due to storage limitations on your drive, you may need to move games that are already present on Steam to another library folder. There are two ways to move existing games to another location on Steam. One is using the Storage Manager and the other is through the game properties.

Using the storage manager

1. Open the storage manager window in Steam using Steps 1 – 4 above, where we created a new library folder.

2. In the window, select the drive that has the game installed and needs to be moved.

3. Select the cash register associated with the game you want to move.

4. Click on the Move button at the bottom.

5. In the move content righ now, select unit with the new Steam library folder using the dropdown menu.

6. Click on the Move button.

Wait for this process to finish as it may take some time depending on the size of the games being moved.

Using the game list

1. Start Steam and select the Library tab.

2. The right button of the mouse in the game to move and choose Properties.

3. Here, go to the local files tab in the left panel.

4. Click on the Move installation folder button on the right side.

5. Use the dropdown menu and choose the library the game should be moved to. Click on Move.

This moves the game files to the selected library folder. Repeat the above process to move the other games.

Thank you for reading.

We hope this post was informative enough to help you change game download/install location on Steam and also move game files between different Steam game folders. Do comment and let us know if you faced any issues regarding the steps mentioned here.