Steam – How to make Steam launch in Big Picture mode

steamwindows 8

I am in the process of building myself a Steam Box – a PC running Windows 8 and Steam that is going to be plugged into my TV without a keyboard and mouse attached. The only form of input plugged into this machine is going to be a wireless XBox 360 controller, which supports XInput.

I want to make it so that when my PC starts up, it will start Steam (which is already covered in many questions on this site) – but I would like Steam to start in Big Picture mode straight away, essentially skipping the need to click on the 'Big Picture' link to start it.

How can I make Steam launch in Big Picture mode?

Best Answer

It should suffice to launch Steam with the -bigpicture switch.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe -bigpicture

Windows 8 boots to Metro, of course, so you may want to either use one of the Windows 8 "backwards compatibility tools" like Start8, or to run a very little script in AHK at boot time:

Send #D

...or you can use Windows 7 instead (Windows 8 SP1 might also let you skip to Metro)

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