Steam – Issues setting up Steam Family Sharing

steamsteam-family-sharing

I am trying to enable Steam family sharing with my brother. We have followed what little documentation we could find and completed the following steps.

  1. I logged into his computer on my steam account
  2. Opened Settings
  3. Opened Family tab
  4. Pressed Authorize this computer
  5. Checked his account in the Authorized accounts section
  6. When I logged back into my account on my machine, it asked me to set up a pin for "family view"

I am wondering if we inadvertently toggled an option somewhere, because now when I log into my account on my machine, I can only access my Library at first. I can click on Steam in my system tray and nothing will happen. I have to right click the Steam icon in the system tray and select Library to bring Steam up, and it will not let me access anything but Library. I have to press on the Green/Red "Family View" icon in the top right and enter my pin to access everything else on my Steam. This seems backwards to me. Should my machine running Steam not act as "admin" and allow me normal functionality of Steam while his machine require the pin I created to access the other areas of Steam?

Best Answer

The PIN is for the parental controls aka Family View, and really has nothing to do with Family Sharing. You should be able to disable the pin by following the official Knowledgebase article:

Disabling Family View To remove Family View from your or your child’s account:

  1. Exit Family View.
  2. Open the Steam Settings menu.
  3. Go to the "Family" tab on the left side of the window that opens.
  4. Select “Disable Family View” from the right side of the Family View window. Confirm your selection on the next window. Note: If using Big Picture, uncheck the box in the first page of the Family View wizard.

This will remove all restrictions from the account. If you wish to enable Family View in the future, simply revisit the "Family" tab in Settings and step through the Family View wizard once more. Your selected options will remain the same if you disable and re-enable the feature again in the future.

After that your client should behave as normally as possible again.

Related Topic