If you're a PC gamer, you've probably enjoyed the chaotic scramble of Steam sales, or scrolling through your recommendations in search of your next favorite game. However, while most of us appreciate Steam--or at least tolerate it, given that it's an unavoidable part of the PC gaming landscape--Valve's venerable storefront can often seem a bit clunky compared to the more modern interfaces we use in our daily lives.

Though you can't fully erase Steam's peculiarities, there are a few ways to shape it more to your tastes. If you're tired of flat-black backgrounds and your game library presenting as an imposing wall of titles, you can add a little bit of customization. Many of these tricks are buried in Steam's somewhat-confusing options menu, but there are still a few tweaks that we'd recommend to make Steam look and feel better.

Categorizing your games

Steam's default game library display settings aren't to my taste. The list is too small, the game detail pane too big, and there's a lot of dark negative space that you have to scroll through to do anything. The good news is that this is by far the most customizable part of the Steam experience, and it doesn't take much effort to fix some of its more glaring flaws.