Today we've updated the Steam Workshop to make the browsing experience quicker and easier to use. The new user interface is available as an opt-in beta, which you can enable by clicking on the "Enter Workshop Beta" on any Workshop browse page (the pages with grids of items to explore).

This update is geared around making the browsing and filtering experience faster and easier to use.

• Wider page & bigger items - This update makes the browsing page wider, allowing for more items and bigger preview images of each item.

• Faster filtering - We've completely rewritten the page, making it update more quickly when applying filters or changing sort orders.

• Smarter filtering per-section - Filters can now be configured by game developers to apply (and appear) for certain types of items. For Workshops that contain both Maps and Items, developers can define which types each filter should apply to.

• New Quick View - Click the little magnifying glass icon in the corner of each item to enter a quick view mode. Explore some screenshots, click to favorite, subscribe, or vote, all without leaving the browsing experience.

• Mobile and Steam Deck friendly - This new rewrite of the page allows us to better manage the responsiveness of the page for different contexts such as mobile, Steam Deck, and Big Picture mode.

The Steam Workshop remains a heavily used part of the Steam Community: to date, there are over 3,000 games with Workshop enabled with a combined total of over 50 million items uploaded. Millions of players regularly subscribe to and vote on items. While we've added features and updated the Workshop over the years, we felt it was time to make some bigger improvements to the overall user experience. Through that lens, the Browse page was at the top of the list. Millions of users browse the Steam Workshop every month, and there are dozens of ways to interact with the user interface while doing it. Unfortunately, most interactions with the page required a full page reload, which significantly slowed down the browsing process.

Q. How long will this be in beta?

A. We're aiming to run this update as a beta for a few weeks or months as we sort out the bugs and respond to your feedback. This browse page was used in a lot of different ways across all the games that support Workshop, and we want to make sure it can handle all of these use cases.

Q. How do I give feedback on the changes?

A. Leave us a comment by clicking the 'Discuss' button below.

Q. Do you plan to update other pages in the Workshop?

A. Yes, but we don't have an exact timeline for when. Once we wrap up this beta of the browsing page, we'll have a better idea of scope of work for subsequent pages.

With today's Steam update, items in the Steam Workshop can now contain data about compatibility with past versions of the game. Once this feature is enabled by the game's developer, mod authors can specify the versions of a game that are known to work for current and historical versions of a Workshop item.

This update to the Steam Workshop is designed to work in conjunction with a set of Steam APIs that game developers can use to manage historical versions of their game. For more information for game developers on game version management, please see our post New! Version Control For Steam Workshop Mods.

There are three main components of this update to Workshop:

1. Deliberate configuration by the game developer. First, it is important that the developer of the game is deliberate about their use of build branches and preserving past versions of the game. To do this, the game developer should keep past builds of the game as well-named branches and put them in a deliberate order. The developer should then also enable "Game Branch Versions" in the Workshop settings for the game. You'll know this is enabled when you see it listed as a feature in the workshop info.
   
   

2. Uploading multiple simultaneous mod versions of the same item. Steam Workshop mods have long supported version history, allowing authors to roll a mod back to a previously uploaded version if they need to. This new update allows the notion of two or more versions of an item being made accessible to players simultaneously.

3. Specifying the range of game versions that each mod version supports. In order to support multiple versions being accessible to players, Workshop item versions can now specify a range of one or more game builds that the mod author knows is supported by the mod. If no range is specified, Steam will assume the version works with any build of the game. If more than one version of the Workshop item are indicated as compatible with the player's current version of the game, then the latest uploaded version of the item will be the one that Steam downloads.

We know that many mod authors will not have the time to check whether their mod supports the latest version of a game. So we built this system to support ranges that include or exclude future updates. If the mod item is generally a simple item and likely to work with new versions of the game, then it may make sense to leave the supported range open-ended. However, if the mod is complex and the mod author wishes to test their mod with new game versions before declaring support, that can be easily done when configuring the supported ranges.

These settings can be viewed and configured under the 'Change Notes' tab for a Workshop item.

Note: Game developers can also configure their Workshop uploader tool to set supported versions when uploading or updating a Workshop item.

Q. I don't see the option to specify supported game versions for my Workshop creation.

A. Make sure the developer of the game has set "Enable Game Branch Versions" in their Steamworks settings for the game. This is a signal that the developer has been deliberate in the ordering of their game versions.

Look for this icon under the 'Enabled Features' within the game's Steam Workshop 'About' page.

• Added the ability to sort items by Time Created or Time Updated
  
• Added the ability to sort items in ascending or descending order
  
• Added the ability to add or remove all items from the selected section (e.g. item's you've published, favorited, or subscribed to)
  
• Added ability to quickly remove all items or linked collections

• Added the ability to subscribe to an item and all the items it depends on
  
• Added previous and next buttons to the image viewer
  
• Adding an item to a collection no longer reloads the web page
  
• Allow unlisted and friends-only items to be added to a collection