Silently Launch Steam on System Startup

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Lately, I've been obsessed with switching up wallpapers using Wallpaper Engine. However, every time I want to change a wallpaper, I need to fire up Steam to connect to the Workshop. To make things easier, I decided to set Steam to launch at startup. But there was one annoying issue: Steam would always open up to the store page on launch, and there’s no option in the settings to disable it. After a quick Google search, I discovered that the startup behavior is a bit of a mystery—some people don't see the store page at all, without changing any settings. It’s quite baffling. The solution, however, is straightforward: just add a startup parameter to Steam's start menu shortcut.

Steps

Here’s a simple solution to fix the issue:

  1. Open the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Steam folder.
  2. Right-click the Steam shortcut and select Properties.
  3. Add -silent at the end of the Target field, then click OK. Make sure there’s a space before the hyphen.

Steps

What Puzzled Me

While the solution is simple, the reasoning behind it left me scratching my head.

  1. In theory, Steam’s auto-start is managed through the registry key at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. I checked the data there, and it shows "D:\Software\Steam\steam.exe" -silent, so the -silent suffix is indeed present. This should, in theory, prevent the store page from appearing on startup. Yet, for some reason, this parameter didn’t work as expected. After hours of searching, I still couldn’t figure out why—even asking ChatGPT left it a bit stumped.
  2. The C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder stores shortcuts for the Start Menu. By all accounts, this folder shouldn’t have anything to do with auto-starting programs. The only explanation I found was that it holds global shortcuts, but I couldn’t verify if this was accurate.

Startup Parameters

The -silent parameter falls under what’s commonly known as command-line or startup parameters, which are designed to control a program’s behavior when it launches. Here are some of the more common Steam startup parameters:

  • -silent: Launches Steam to the system tray only, without displaying the user interface or pop-ups.
  • -tcp: Forces Steam to use the TCP protocol rather than the UDP protocol.
  • -clearbeta: Opts out of the beta client and reverts to the stable version.
  • -login username password: Bypasses the Steam login window and directly logs in with the specified username and password.

Reference:

Setting Steam Launch Options
What are additional parameters?