Congratulations! You’re almost ready to start gaming. If you have multiple disks you might want to add a new library.
After you have installed Steam you go to add a library and you might notice that Steam doesn’t see all of the directories in your home directory, only a handful:
By default Steam will only have access to a default set of directories. However you might have a larger library drive (such as /mnt/steam), so we need to tell Flatpak that you want steam to have access to that drive:
Step 1
- Close Steam before we start.
- Install Flatseal and run it.
Step 2
Browse to “Steam” in the left column, and then this lets us modify Steam’s permissions. Go to the “Filesystem” section, and click the add folder button under “Other Files”, and then add the directory to the path widget:
Step 3
- Close flatseal and then relaunch Steam.
- Now add a new library.
Command Line Instructions
If you prefer to use the CLI, check out these instructions on Steam flatpak FAQ.
Why is it like this?
Ideally Steam would ask you for permission to access the directories you need right from the GUI. Check out xdg-desktop-portal, as it develops more and more applications will integrate this and workarounds like this won’t be necessary. In the meantime, enjoy your games!