Steam Wishlists add categories, filtered sharing, and expanded gifting on July 22

Valve updated Steam Wishlists on July 22, 2026 with custom categories, improved search, and new sharing controls. Players can create categories inside a wishlist, assign games to them, filter by category, and add games to frequent categories from the “On Wishlist” dropdown on store pages.

Wishlist notifications can now be limited to selected categories. Valve also added clearer demo visibility for wishlisted games, optional demo-release notifications, microtrailers on capsule hover, and navigation fixes across browser, mobile, Steam Client, and SteamOS so returning to a wishlist better preserves the previous view.

The new sharing option creates links for a specific category or filtered wishlist view. A shared link can show the selected list even if the full wishlist is private, and the link can be revoked later. Valve positions this as useful for birthday or holiday lists, because gift buyers can work from a narrower list instead of a full backlog.

A connected Steam gifting update shipped the same day. Guest checkout now supports game purchases, not just digital gift cards and hardware. Games and digital gift cards can also be sent directly to an email address; unaccepted email gifts are automatically refunded after 30 days. Reddit discussion treated the change as a practical quality-of-life update for families and friends buying from wishlists. Source: Steam News.