The title is two different things because they're sorta related.

----


There are basically two ways to do this:

1. editing the css for Steam's interface itself. There are multiple ways to do this, but the key points are either you have to edit it perfectly to fit the original length of the file or else Steam undoes your edit, or you can do whatever edits you want then prevent Steam from updating.

2. editing the css in a Steam skin. (I'm using this method right now.)


For this, you'll need to go to your Steam install folder, then go to the steamui subfolder, then the css subfolder, then open the libraryroot.css file.

1a. "perfect edits" method

(credit to Taco_Taco for posting the old method, and credit to Blitz4 for improving on it)

Search for the text "WhatsNew". You should be able to find this:
Change BOTH lines, so that they instead say this:
(Note how the first line is missing a space, while the second line has an extra character length.)

Alternatively, here's the old method. Change those lines to this:
(Note how both lines are exactly the same length as before. In this older version, you only need to modify the second line.)

This old method will cause the Add Shelf button to be broken. The first (new) method doesn't have this problem.

Make sure that you have the exact same number of characters in the replaced file, or else this won't work right and will keep getting reverted every time you restart Steam. The new method subtracts one character from the first line and adds one more to the second line, to fit the code. The old method only changes the second line, and keeps enough spaces to make it the same length. WARNING: Simply doing a copy-paste may change the number of spaces or whether there's a linebreak, so you may need to copy this by hand, or edit it after pasting.

After you've copied it over properly, save your libraryroot.css file; don't close it until you're sure it worked right. Saving should cause the "What's New" banner to disappear. You should see your Steam Library UI update immediately if you have your Steam library window open in the background. (If you've made a mistake, the Steam library should be completely broken, and you can fix that by undoing your changes and saving again.)

Also, this method will get reverted every time Steam updates. So there's the following alternative...

1b. "stop updates" method

Do any edit you want, and then block Steam from updating itself. (Credit to CriticalAlpha for writing that up!)

If you do this, you can edit more stuff too. And you're not beholden to file size or line lengths. Furthermore, you can make even more extensive changes to Steam, without Steam overwriting your stuff.

But what if there were a way to make the changes we've been talking about without having them reverted every Steam update?


(credit to The HopelessGamer™ for posting this)

Go to the skins folder ( Steam\skins ). Use an existing Steam skin, or create a new one by creating a new folder with whatever name you want. Go to the resource folder inside the skin's folder ( Steam\skins\SkinName\resource ). If you don't have such a folder, copy the resource folder (including all its contents) to the skin's folder. Now inside resource, look for a file called webkit.css .

Paste the following at the top of that file.


Save the file. Now, the skin you just edited will have the What's New removed.

You can't see the change immediately, but just go to Steam menu -> Settings -> Interface -> "Select the skin you wish Steam to use (requires Steam to restart)", then restart.

It should work. And if you horribly screwed things up, switch your skin back to the default. If you've screwed things up so horribly that you can't even access Steam settings again, delete the skin folder and restart Steam and Steam should default to the default skin.

----

And now for part two...


This is simple. Do the above, then remove all your shelves.

Now you should have an entirely blank grey rectangle, aside from a pale ghostly "+ ADD SHELF" mark at the top which you should be able to easily ignore.

The left side is now a crappy version of Small Mode, because it's not small, the icons are forced to load, and you can't start games using keyboard. But, hey, if you wanna do this, all the more power to you.

Edit: left sidebar is now a less crappy version of Small Mode because icons can now be turned off. However, you still can't start games using keyboard, and lag is still generated when the detail pages load. I guess the result is a crappier version of the old Detail Mode?

Also this may be useful if Valve truly removes all access to what's left of Small Mode. Hopefully they never do this. And hopefully they restore List View.


If you used method 1, just change that part of the css code back to what it was, then save the libraryroot.css again. Now the What's New is back (and Add Shelf works again, if you broke it earlier).

If you used method 2, switch your Steam skin.