How to Share games on Steam using the Family Sharing feature?

Learn how you can share games from your Steam library with your friends and family.

Jun 7, 2019

Last Updated On: Jun 7, 2019

Steam is one of the best-known platform where you can legally buy and own a game online on your PC. In short, it is a digital marketplace for games of all kinds for PC and it has a large collection of AAA games along with plethora of Indie games. But steam also has a function where the user can let others join in on their favourite games. But since it doesn’t allow multiple user IDs to sign in and play at the same time, it makes the sharing and playing together difficult. For that reason, Steam has a feature called the Steam Family Sharing feature, it allows you to share your game library with friends and family.

Here we are listing down the steps by which you can share your Steam game collection using the Steam Family Sharing:

First, enable the Steam Guard which is Steam’s built-in security feature. For that you would need to open your account and click on Steam.
Then click on Settings and then go to Account.
Here, select Manage Steam Guard Account Security. Once selected, it will be toggled on.
After the Steam Guard is enabled, you need to set up the Family Sharing feature. For that, you need to click on Steam and then head to Settings.
After that, you need to go to Family Once there, you will be able to see the list of all the Steam accounts that have logged in using your PC.
If the user with whom you want to share the game isn’t on the list then you need them to log in using your PC and then ask them to log out. It should be noted that the Steam Family Sharing feature can be used only with the user who have logged into their account using your PC. You can also ask the ID and password of your friend and family and log in and then log out of it which will make them appear on the list. The list includes the people with which you can share the game.
Once it is done, you need to check the box next to the user(s), it will allow them to access your game library. Once it is done, click on OK.
It will allow other users to play on your PC using your game library.
But if they want to play on their own PC, you would need to authorize their machine first. For that you need to go to Steam and then head to Settings.
Once there, go to Family and then click on Authorise this computer. Once it is done, all the authorised family members and friends will be able to play games which is inside your game library. But it should be kept in mind that only one person can use your game library at a given time.