Steam URL Converter

[skwire]

Name	Steam URL Converter
Short Description	Steam allows you to create shortcuts on your desktop to launch games.  However, these shortcuts are not standard Windows .LNK files.  They are .URL files and, sometimes, they don't show the proper icon for the intended game even if the .URL file contains the correct information.  This app tries to solve the issue by converting the .URL shortcut into a .LNK shortcut.  Simply drag the .URL file onto the SteamURLConverter.exe file and it will immediately create a .LNK file in the same folder as the .URL file.
Supported OSes	All Windows
Web Page	Website
Download Link	Download
Author	Jody Holmes - Skwire Empire
Credits	Special thanks to lanux128 for the original idea.

[lanux128]

thanks to skwire for this tool.

the Steam shortcuts are a bit wonky on my PC, they always get the IE's globe icon instead of the actual icon. this tool helps to fix that, also it's easier to input command-line parameters on an .lnk file than an .url one.

[y0himba]

This is extremely convenient!  NICE!  Thanks so much.

[jockovonred]

Nice idea for a tool!  One of my quirks with the way Steam modified the lnk files into their new format has been a bugger for me.  I am excited to find this tool.

Thanks.!

I am going to test this one out tonight.

[skwire]

Great.  Let me know what the results are.  =]

[skwire]

Website | Download
v1.0.2 - 2014-11-07
    + Added a "Remove Send to... shortcut" button.  (Thanks, Valentin)

v1.0.1 - 2013-12-23
    * Changed up initial interface seen when launching the SteamURLConverter and
      added a button which will add a shortcut to your "Send to..." folder.

[IQLover]

Short Description

Steam allows you to create shortcuts on your desktop to launch games.  However, these shortcuts are not standard Windows .LNK files.  They are .URL files and, sometimes, they don't show the proper icon for the intended game even if the .URL file contains the correct information.  This app tries to solve the issue by converting the .URL shortcut into a .LNK shortcut.  Simply drag the .URL file onto the SteamURLConverter.exe file and it will immediately create a .LNK file in the same folder as the .URL file.

Supported OSes

All Windows

I have just tried it (Win7) but does work partially ONLY; it creates the Shortcut, but if I double click it,
nothing happenes (System Explorer showes me that Steam gets started) bat that is it, th egame won't start! 

[skwire]

Works here for me using W7/64 Ultimate.  The account I use has administrator rights and UAC is set to "Never notify" (if that matters).

[IQLover]

Works here for me using W7/64 Ultimate.  The account I use has administrator rights and UAC is set to "Never notify" (if that matters).

-skwire (March 03, 2015, 12:19 PM)

I might try that too.
Thanks

[MrZoolook]

For what it's worth, it appears to work on my Win7 setup. I also noticed you can bulk select a whole group of shortcuts, and use the tool on them all in one hit!

Very well done. I only have a hundred or so games, and I wasn't looking forward to doing this s**t manually, so I can't imagine how it'd be for anyone with more then that. Why the hell don't steam do it like this to begin with!?

[skwire]

Hi, MrZoolook, and welcome to the DonationCoder site.   

For what it's worth, it appears to work on my Win7 setup. I also noticed you can bulk select a whole group of shortcuts, and use the tool on them all in one hit!

-MrZoolook (August 28, 2015, 01:08 AM)

It's nice when a plan comes together, eh?

Very well done. I only have a hundred or so games, and I wasn't looking forward to doing this s**t manually, so I can't imagine how it'd be for anyone with more then that. Why the hell don't steam do it like this to begin with!?

-MrZoolook (August 28, 2015, 01:08 AM)

Well, I think it has to do with the fact that using the URL format is supposed to be just that, universal.  This means they can use this format on different platforms (Linux and Mac) without much internal code differences.  That is, I don't think that Linux and Mac support Windows LNK files.

[Deozaan]

This works for me as far as converting the link to an actual shortcut. But it doesn't work for making the icons appear. It seems the shortcuts look in the standard Program Files directory for Steam and the icons, even though I have Steam installed elsewhere.

[skwire]

This works for me as far as converting the link to an actual shortcut. But it doesn't work for making the icons appear. It seems the shortcuts look in the standard Program Files directory for Steam and the icons, even though I have Steam installed elsewhere.

-Deozaan (October 27, 2015, 01:47 AM)

Strange...I don't appear to have that issue.  I'm using W7/64 with an account that has administrator rights.  If you open up the .URL file in a text editor, what does it have for the IconFile value?

[Deozaan]

This works for me as far as converting the link to an actual shortcut. But it doesn't work for making the icons appear. It seems the shortcuts look in the standard Program Files directory for Steam and the icons, even though I have Steam installed elsewhere.

-Deozaan (October 27, 2015, 01:47 AM)

Strange...I don't appear to have that issue.  I'm using W7/64 with an account that has administrator rights.  If you open up the .URL file in a text editor, what does it have for the IconFile value?

-skwire (October 27, 2015, 12:13 PM)

Looking through a few of them, they have the Program Files path. So I guess it's no fault of your program at all. Thanks.

[skwire]

Looking through a few of them, they have the Program Files path. So I guess it's no fault of your program at all. Thanks.

-Deozaan (October 27, 2015, 03:16 PM)

Try right-clicking a game, creating a new desktop shortcut, and then checking the path in the new .URL.  If it's correct, then try using SteamURLConverter to create a .LNK out of it.

[Deozaan]

Looking through a few of them, they have the Program Files path. So I guess it's no fault of your program at all. Thanks.

-Deozaan (October 27, 2015, 03:16 PM)

Try right-clicking a game, creating a new desktop shortcut, and then checking the path in the new .URL.  If it's correct, then try using SteamURLConverter to create a .LNK out of it.

-skwire (October 27, 2015, 05:43 PM)

That would have worked, but I just opened them all up in Notepad++ and did a mass find/replace to change the path in all of them.

That said, some of them still don't have icons because there are no icon files in that directory for those games. And even doing as you suggested (at least for the one I tried) doesn't create an icon file, and just had a blank path for the icon in the .URL file. Weird.

I'm not too worried about "fixing" this. Just reporting here for the sake of completeness.