The joke in the topic subject name doesn't really work because Valve already used the clever wording when naming the product. Basically, I want a third party tool to manage the way my Steam client downloads stuff, like a scheduler or something. I have tens of gigabytes queued up from multiple sales over the past few months, but with only a few hours every day to download without a cap, it's slow going. It's even harder when this window is between 2am and 7am, meaning I have to set my alarm twice, once to start downloading and once to stop. "Scheduler" is on the official list of "Things We Know You Guys Want. We're Working On It, So Stop Bugging Us" on the Steam Forums, but it makes me wonder why it's so hard to implement such a thing. I mean, it would have to be a hard thing to do if it was something that took a long time. Otherwise, it's indicative of sloth.

Try netlimiter, its exactly the kind of thing you need for that, lets you specify available bandwidth per application and schedule active & passive times.

I've not used it for a few years so its possible it's gone to crap but it'd be a good starting point

Why don't you just download stuff when or soon before you want to play them?

Might you be able to set up windows scheduler to enable/disable your network connection?

When you go to bed, disable your connection and start steam. Then have two entries in the scheduler, one enabling the other disabling. Then you can close steam and reenable your network connection when you wake up.

Of course, you need to work out the command for disabling and enabling the network connection but I'm sure you can find that out somewhere.

Netlimiter.

I don't know that it is you're asking. "When or soon before"? What is that? I said I have a daily Tx/Rx cap imposed by my ISP, and the cap is only lifted during the wee hours of the morning, between 2am and 7am. I don't want to STOP Steam from downloading stuff while I'm asleep. As I said, the cap is lifted between 2am and 7am, which is when I'm asleep.

Anyway, Netlimiter doesn't let me do what I want it to do, which is to temporarily disable the "Download/Update Games" function without completely cutting Steam off from the internet, so I can still play those games (you know, because Steam still has to authenticate the game every single time I run it). Not the free version anyway. All I can do is wait for Valve to apply a built-in scheduler, which is something they should have done long ago.

No, you misread. I didn't provide a way to stop it, I provided a way to only let it run between 2am and 7am. In other words, exactly what you asked for. I'll let you off this time, please read it again though. :P

If I disable my connection when I go to bed, and re-enable it when I get up, how is Steam going to connect in the interim?

Good god, you misread it again! Please, read it again.

EDIT: Ok, I'll spell it out You disable it when you go to bed and have a scheduler entry enabling it at 2am and disabling it at 7am.

Of course netlimiter sounds easier, it's just bugging me that you're still not reading my post properly.

And somehow GoG.com edited out my post entirely, save the quotes. What I said was I read it properly, it's just bugging me why you're adding "Disable before you go to bed" and "Enable before you wake up" before and after "Set entries into scheduler". It's redundant.

Well you can't be quite that selective with netlimiter (I suspect you'd need a mod to the actual steam program) but what you could do is restrict steams bandwidth during the times you want to avoid downloads, experiment a bit and see what the minimum amount of bandwidth it needs to connect is and restrict it to just that much. If you give it 10KB/s it might be enough to authenticate but not be enough that any running downloads have an appreciable effect on your download limit, I think thats about the best option you're going to get until they implement their own scheduler

I generally leave my pc running & downloading it and use a program called Switchoff & set a time for the pc to turn off and tell it to force everything to close down (I too have a cap that is valid apart from midnight to 6.) then I just leave whatever downloads I want running. I usually put them on my net-top though as it's much less power hungry (65w vs 480w) then copy it over in the morning.

http://www.airytec.com/en/switch-off/get.aspx (Switchoff Link.)

Right, a mod to Steam itself is what I was asking for in the first place. I suppose I should have said "a mod for Steam itself" in that many words.

I've never heard of mods for steam itself, I always figured that'd be the kind of thing they'd just kick you off for

Damn this bold tag thing is annoying when people don't close them, breaks the entire thread