How to make Steam download game updates immediately?

My Steam client always waits for an hour+ to start downloading a game update: "Scheduled for 19:35". There is a button to force update though. Auto-updates are turned on for all games.

How can I make Steam download updates immediately without additional interactions?

Steam settings:

Steam settings


This isn't something that can be turned off (unless you manually do it per-game), and happens for two (main) reasons:

  • The game had some form of error occur while downloading, so it's been scheduled for a few minutes time to try again.
  • The game's update has just gone live - and steam cannot handle thousands of people all downloading it at the same time, so it staggers the various updates to ensure that everyone is able to get a fast and reliable download.

Official Source


For what it's worth, the best workaround I found is to scroll to the bottom of the update list and click "download now" for the bottom update. You can keep your mouse cursor in the same place and keep clicking "download now" for each update. Once you have gotten through the list, they will all be queued for immediate download.

I have an old gaming PC that I rarely use so there are always a ton of updates. This is how I get them to all run immediately. Hope this helps. It's not a fix, but I believe it is an effective workaround.