steam_monitor

steam_monitor is a tool that allows for real-time monitoring of Steam players' activities.

Features

• Real-time tracking of Steam users' gaming activity (including detection when a user gets online/offline or plays games)
• Basic statistics for user activity (such as how long in different states, how long a game is played, overall time and the number of played games in the session etc.)
• Email notifications for different events (when a player gets online/away/snooze/offline, starts/finishes/changes a game or errors occur)
• Saving all user activities with timestamps to a CSV file
• Possibility to control the running copy of the script via signals

Change Log

Release notes can be found here

Requirements

The tool requires Python 3.5 or higher.

It uses steam library, also requests and python-dateutil.

It has been tested successfully on:

• macOS (Ventura, Sonoma & Sequoia)
• Linux:
  • Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye & Bookworm)
  • Ubuntu 24
  • Rocky Linux (8.x, 9.x)
  • Kali Linux (2024, 2025)
• Windows (10 & 11)

It should work on other versions of macOS, Linux, Unix and Windows as well.

Installation

Install the required Python packages:

python3 -m pip install requests python-dateutil "steam[client]"

Or from requirements.txt:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Copy the steam_monitor.py file to the desired location.

You might want to add executable rights if on Linux/Unix/macOS:

chmod a+x steam_monitor.py

Configuration

Edit the steam_monitor.py file and change any desired configuration variables in the marked CONFIGURATION SECTION (all parameters have detailed description in the comments).

Steam Web API key

You can get the Steam Web API key here: http://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey

Change the STEAM_API_KEY variable to respective value (or use -u parameter).

User privacy settings

In order to monitor Steam user activity, proper privacy settings need to be enabled on the monitored user account, i.e. in 'Edit Profile' -> 'Privacy Settings', the value in section 'My Profile' and 'Game details' should be set to 'Friends Only' (if you are friends) or to 'Public'.

SMTP settings

If you want to use email notifications functionality you need to change the SMTP settings (host, port, user, password, sender, recipient) in the steam_monitor.py file. If you leave the default settings then no notifications will be sent.

You can verify if your SMTP settings are correct by using -z parameter (the tool will try to send a test email notification):

./steam_monitor.py -z

Other settings

All other variables can be left at their defaults, but feel free to experiment with it.

Getting started

List of supported parameters

To get the list of all supported parameters:

./steam_monitor.py -h

or

python3 ./steam_monitor.py -h

Monitoring mode

To monitor specific user activity, just type the player's Steam64 ID (12345678901234567 in the example below):

./steam_monitor.py 12345678901234567

If you have not changed STEAM_API_KEY variable in the steam_monitor.py file, you can use -u parameter:

./steam_monitor.py 12345678901234567 -u "your_steam_web_api_key"

If you do not know the user's Steam64 ID, but you know the Steam profile/community URL (which can be customized by the user), you can also run the tool with -r parameter which will automatically resolve it to Steam64 ID:

./steam_monitor.py -r "https://steamcommunity.com/id/steam_username/"

The tool will run indefinitely and monitor the player until the script is interrupted (Ctrl+C) or terminated in another way.

You can monitor multiple Steam players by running multiple instances of the script.

It is recommended to use something like tmux or screen to keep the script running after you log out from the server (unless you are running it on your desktop).

The tool automatically saves its output to steam_monitor_{user_steam64_id}.log file (the log file name suffix can be changed via -y parameter or logging can be disabled completely with -d parameter).

The tool also saves the timestamp and last status (after every change) to the steam_{user_display_name}_last_status.json file, so the last status is available after the restart of the tool.

How to use other features

Email notifications

If you want to receive email notifications when the user comes online or goes offline, use the -a parameter:

./steam_monitor.py -r "https://steamcommunity.com/id/steam_username/" -a

If you want to be informed about any user status changes (online/away/snooze/offline), use the -s parameter:

./steam_monitor.py -r "https://steamcommunity.com/id/steam_username/" -s

If you want to be informed when a user starts, stops or changes the game being played then use the -g parameter:

./steam_monitor.py -r "https://steamcommunity.com/id/steam_username/" -g

Make sure you defined your SMTP settings earlier (see SMTP settings).

Example email:

Saving gaming activity to the CSV file

If you want to save all reported activities of the Steam user, use the -b parameter with the name of the file (it will be automatically created if it does not exist):

./steam_monitor.py -r "https://steamcommunity.com/id/steam_username/" -b steam_username.csv

Check intervals

If you want to change the check interval when the user is online/away/snooze to 15 seconds, use the -k parameter and when the user is offline to 2 minutes (120 seconds), use the -c parameter.

./steam_monitor.py -r "https://steamcommunity.com/id/steam_username/" -k 15 -c 120

Controlling the script via signals (only macOS/Linux/Unix)

The tool has several signal handlers implemented which allow to change behavior of the tool without a need to restart it with new parameters.

List of supported signals:

Signal	Description
USR1	Toggle email notifications when user gets online or offline (-a)
USR2	Toggle email notifications when user starts/stops/changes the game (-g)
CONT	Toggle email notifications for all user status changes (online/away/snooze/offline) (-s)
TRAP	Increase the check timer for player activity when user is online/away/snooze (by 30 seconds)
ABRT	Decrease check timer for player activity when user is online/away/snooze (by 30 seconds)

So if you want to change functionality of the running tool, just send the proper signal to the desired copy of the script.

I personally use the pkill tool, so for example, to toggle email notifications when a user gets online or offline for the tool instance monitoring the 12345678901234567 user:

pkill -f -USR1 "python3 ./steam_monitor.py 12345678901234567"

As Windows supports limited number of signals, this functionality is available only on Linux/Unix/macOS.

Other

Check other supported parameters using -h.

You can combine all the parameters mentioned earlier.

Coloring log output with GRC

If you use GRC and want to have the tool's log output properly colored you can use the configuration file available here

Change your grc configuration (typically .grc/grc.conf) and add this part:

# monitoring log file
.*_monitor_.*\.log
conf.monitor_logs

Now copy the conf.monitor_logs to your .grc directory and steam_monitor log files should be nicely colored when using grc tool.

License

This project is licensed under the GPLv3 - see the LICENSE file for details