Wait, the animated avatars and frames actually play on the forums? Where is the option to enable that? I seem to have overlooked it...

Edit, oh wow, they do, that's cool. Must have been in a recent update that i missed.

I was wondering that myself.

Today maintenance has all avatar features enabled on the forums I see. But anyway, +1 would like to have an option to disable them.

As you said, we already have options specifically for "Friends & Chat", but nothing else.

There does exist an option called Reduce motion (Settings > Accessibility) in the Steam client.

Ideally this option would also prevent animated avatars & frames from playing anywhere in the Steam client / on the Steam website (forums, profiles, settings, library).

It would be nice if Valve could also enhance the Steam website to obey any "Reduce motion" settings signaled by web browsers / operating systems:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/At-rules/@media/prefers-reduced-motion

Agreed. At first I thought it was nice seeing animated avatars and frames through all Steam, but it got annoying really fast. I hope Valve add an option to disable those soon.

Yeah... I wonder why did they even think that enabling that kind of stuff would be a good idea.
It stings in the eyes.

It seems Valve listened to my suggestion:

If you turn on Reduce motion inside Settings > Accessibility, the animations stop!


Hopefully this will be expanded to more parts of the website (profile backgrounds, profile showcases, etc) and will also be implemented into the Steam client itself (library & settings still have some animated profile icons).

Basically:
non-essential animations should not play / load on their own by default.

Of course, subtle animations which are explicitly caused by user interactions are fine (in my opinion).

@nian, Yep, I can confirm that it now works on forum pages. Not a bad start!

Where is the option ? There seems to not be available when using a browser.

Originally posted by Tharon:

Where is the option ? There seems to not be available when using a browser.

Make sure animations are disabled in your operating system.
Your browser will signal those settings to websites (if supported by the website).

Windows 10:
Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Show animations in Windows (disable)

Windows 11:
Settings > Accessibility > Visual Effects > Animation Effects (disable)

macOS:
System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce motion (enable)

Linux - GTK/GNOME:
Settings > Accessibility > Seeing > Reduced animation (enable)

Linux - GTK/GNOME (older versions):
GNOME Tweaks > "General" or "Appearance" > Animations (disable)

Linux - Plasma/KDE:
System Settings > Workspace Behavior -> General Behavior > "Animation speed" is set all the way to right to "Instant"

Thank you, didn't know this was a thing.,

Originally posted by Tharon:

Thank you, didn't know this was a thing.,

Thankfully Valve changed their website to obey the "Reduced Motion" settings.
Though I'm still not sure WHY they made the forum avatars animated in the first place.

Originally posted by nian:

Originally posted by Tharon:

Thank you, didn't know this was a thing.,

Thankfully Valve changed their website to obey the "Reduced Motion" settings.
Though I'm still not sure WHY they made the forum avatars animated in the first place.

The frames are still animated for me on Firefox and Chrome. Only in the Steam Client this setting is respected. At least on my system (Linux Mint 22.2 Xfce).

Yes, it was an unpleasant surprise. And Valve sohould at least add an option to disable them, they are annoying and a large number of webp animations can be really taxing on the system.

I just noticed this now. Finally, animated frames are showing up everywhere!

Originally posted by Tharon:

and a large number of webp animations can be really taxing on the system.

Animated frames are PNG, not webp.
Displaying regular images in a browser can be "really taxing on the system"? Seriously? xD Unless you have a 20-year-old PC.