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Publishing to Steam Workshop

This is a cheatsheet for the maintainer (Sebastian) — the step-by-step for pushing the single SignalRGB Glow wallpaper to the Wallpaper Engine Steam Workshop. The bundle is already produced by installer/build.ps1; the rest is a UI flow inside Wallpaper Engine.

Starting with v0.7.2-beta the build emits one combined WE bundle with a Screen index user property. Subscribers assign that single item to every monitor they want to drive and pick a different Screen index per assignment. The four per-screen bundles from earlier builds (SignalRGB_Glow_Screen{1..4}) are gone — the single bundle covers every use case.

Prerequisites

  • A Steam account that owns Wallpaper Engine.
  • The bundle built locally: run pwsh installer/build.ps1 once and confirm wallpaper_bridge/we_bundles_single/signalrgb-glow/ contains:
  • index.html
  • project.json (the WE manifest — title, BBCode description, tags, screenIndex combo property with options Screen 1 / Screen 2 / Screen 3 / Screen 4)
  • interact.min.js + interact.LICENSE.txt
  • thumbnail.png
  • workshop_preview.png (1920 × 1080 — the listing image Workshop browses)

The installer's "Install for Wallpaper Engine" task copies this folder into Steam's steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\projects\myprojects\signalrgb-glow\ for you. You can also drop the folder there manually.

Test locally before publishing

  1. pwsh installer/build.ps1 (the single bundle is produced under step [3a/5]).
  2. Make sure the installer's WE task ran (or copy wallpaper_bridge/we_bundles_single/signalrgb-glow/ into Steam's …\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\projects\myprojects\ by hand).
  3. Restart Wallpaper Engine → it picks up SignalRGB Glow under My Wallpapers.
  4. Assign it to monitor 1. Open its properties panel — there's a Screen index dropdown. Leave it on Screen 1.
  5. Assign the same wallpaper to monitor 2. Set its Screen index to Screen 2.
  6. Same for monitor 3 / 4 if you have them.
  7. Make sure the bridge's Number of screens matches and that SignalRGB has the matching Desktop Wallpaper - Screen N devices placed on the canvas.

Each WE instance opens its own WS connection to the bridge with the right ?screen=N and gets its own glow feed. To verify: tint each SignalRGB device differently and check the wallpapers light up correctly.

Upload flow (~5 min, one-time)

  1. Open Wallpaper Engine on Steam.
  2. Tab Workshop → Manage → My Wallpapers. SignalRGB Glow is in the list.
  3. Right-click it → Workshop → Share. WE opens its upload panel.
  4. Fill in:
  5. Title: pre-filled from project.json ("SignalRGB Glow"). Leave as-is.
  6. Description: pre-filled from project.json (BBCode, with bridge requirement + GitHub link prominently up top, including the multi-monitor Screen index explanation). Review once for typos.
  7. Tags: pre-filled from project.json (RGB, Customizable, Web, Abstract, Multi-Monitor). Workshop will show its own tag picker; you can add more if relevant.
  8. Preview image: Workshop wants its own preview file. Click Browse and pick workshop_preview.png from the bundle folder (…\myprojects\signalrgb-glow\workshop_preview.png).
  9. Visibility: Public for general release. Use Friends or Private for a soft-launch / a friend-test.
  10. Change notes (only on later uploads): explain what's new.
  11. Accept the Steam Workshop Terms (only the very first upload of your life).
  12. Hit Submit. Steam processes for ~30–60 s, then a "View in browser" button appears.

The item gets a Workshop ID (large integer in the URL).

After upload — quality-of-life

  • Pin a screenshot of the wallpaper actually running (cutouts and live glow) once you have one. The procedural workshop_preview.png is good for first-launch but a real screenshot is more convincing.
  • Set the License field to MIT (Workshop UI dropdown) for clarity.

Re-publishing after a bridge update

Every time the bridge is re-released (= new build of installer/build.ps1) the index.html inside the WE bundle changes. Subscribed users get the new HTML the next time they restart Wallpaper Engine — only if you republish the Workshop item.

  • Workshop pulls from the same …\myprojects\signalrgb-glow\ folder you uploaded from. Make sure that folder has the freshly-built files (the installer task overwrites in place).
  • In WE: Workshop → Manage → My Wallpapers → right-click SignalRGB Glow → Workshop → Submit Update. (Same dialog as the initial upload, just routed at the existing Workshop ID.)
  • Write a one-liner in the Change notes field — Workshop shows it on the item's page so users see what changed.

Subscribers don't need to do anything; Steam pulls the new files in the background.

A note on the legacy per-screen design

Builds v0.5.2-beta → v0.7.1-beta produced four per-screen WE bundles (SignalRGB Glow - Screen 1 / 2 / 3 / 4) — that was the workaround before user properties were wired up. Those items were never actually published to the Steam Workshop, so there's nothing to retire in the Workshop UI. The single-bundle approach below is the only thing that ever needs to live on Workshop.

What's automated, what's not

Step Automated?
Building the WE bundle ✅ installer/build.ps1
Generating preview image ✅ installer/generate_workshop_preview.py
Filling project.json (title, description, tags, screenIndex options) ✅ installer/build.ps1
Copying the bundle into Steam's projects folder ✅ installer's "Install for Wallpaper Engine" task
Uploading to Workshop ❌ manual, ~5 min — no headless API for it
Re-publishing after a bridge update ❌ also manual

Workshop's UI flow is the only manual step. With a single item the manual cost is now flat regardless of how many monitors the user has. If volume ever grows enough to justify it, SteamCMD plus a workshop_item.vdf can drive uploads from the command line — overkill for one item.