Unable to preview "Game Recording" when "Recordings Folder" is set outside of ~/ directory

[hogehoge61]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): 1735842154 (Beta Update)
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch Linux (2025/01/04)
• GPU: AMD (Radeon RX 580)
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz (No apparent errors were found in the log files, but I am attaching them just in case.)
• GPU: AMD (Radeon RX 580)

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

As stated in the title, when the Recordings Folder for Game Recording is set to a path outside the ~/ directory, the preview cannot be played within the Steam client. Recordings are created correctly in the specified folder, and exporting them works without issues, so this seems to be a problem specific to the preview functionality.

A similar report can be found below. Considering the mention of partition formats different from /home (XFS), such as ext4 and NTFS, it is likely that this case also involves placing the Recordings Folder outside the ~/ directory. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/3/6400272691576783214/

This bug appears to be present in both the current Stable and Beta versions.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Set Game Recording to Record in Background.
2. Set the Recordings Folder to a path outside of the /home directory. (In my case: /data/game/ssd/240g/hogehoge61/testrec/)
3. Play a game for a reasonable amount of time and then close it.
4. Open View -> Recordings & Screenshots.
5. Select the Background Recording for the game you were playing.
6. Confirm that the preview cannot be played.

As shown below, thumbnails are displayed, but the preview does not play.

[augustobmoura]

Can confirm this, it is also happening to me on EndeavourOS. Using symlinks doesn't work either, but bind mounts do.

This seems like a big problem, writing recordings to other disks is a must, since background recordings can get pretty huge and continuous writing is very harmful for SSDs.

My solution was to add a bind mount to /etc/fstab binding a ~/Videos/Steam directory to my extra HD. That seems to solve it for me

[A-UNDERSCORE-D]

Saying a me-too here as well; bind mount worked fine. But otherwise no previews

OpenSuse Tumbleweed

[tidle]

I'm experiencing this issue as well: the bind-mount work around worked for me.

[Abneto]

Can confirm this is still an active issue. I can capture clips but cannot preview them on the window, though hovering over the timeline gives you preview frames.

Operating System: Bazzite 42 KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.18.0 Qt Version: 6.9.2 Kernel Version: 6.16.4-115.bazzite.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit) Graphics Platform: Wayland Processors: 32 × AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT 16-Core Processor Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.5 GiB usable) Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Manufacturer: BIOSTAR Group Product Name: A320MH

[A-UNDERSCORE-D]

To note, bind mount workaround continues to work, and provides a bit of info towards the cause

[ChristianSilvermoon]

This has been driving me nuts since the feature was introduced. I have limited space on /home and this is a genuinely huge issue for me considering my other drive has literal terabytes free.

Thank you very much to @augustobmoura for the Bind Mount sugggestion.

I raise my own version, which uses Systemd user unit to call bindfs, skipping the need for root to mount or modification of /etc/fstab

Created a Systemd User Unit at ~/.config/systemd/user/steam-recordings-bindfs.service

[Unit]
Description=Bind mount Recordings folder to workaround steam-for-linux Issue 11630
After=syslog.target network.target
ConditionPathIsDirectory=/path/to/recordings/directory

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=bindfs "/path/to/recordings/directory" "/home/USER/Videos/Steam Recordings"
ExecStop=fusermount -u "/home/USER/Videos/Steam Recordings"
Restart=no

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

And then ran

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now steam-recordings-bindfs

And then instructed Steam to use the /home/USER/Videos/Steam Recordings

The unit should mount the directory on login and unmount on logout now.

[ChristianSilvermoon]

I wanted to add a thought to this.

Is it possible that this could be related to Pressure Vessel, I wonder?

I wonder if it's worth experimenting with launching Steam with an environment variable to allow access to the recordings folder