Steam and PlayStation show you what you bought. GameLynx shows you what you can do with it: how many hours your backlog holds, what is nearly finished, and how long the one you are looking at will take. On your Steam Deck, your computer and your phone.
Runs on Windows Steam Deck and Linux macOS Android Your browser
Free. No account with us, no server, no adverts. Your data stays on your own device.
The problem
You scroll past hundreds of titles you picked up in a sale, nothing stands out, and you start the same game for the sixth time. Not because there is nothing better in there, but because you cannot see what is in there.
GameLynx splits your library along the questions you actually ask. What have I not started? What is nearly done? What have I not touched in months? Every answer sits in the rail with its count beside it, before you press anything.
Time, not titles
Every card carries how long the game runs according to HowLongToBeat, submitted by players who kept track of their own playthrough. Add that up across your backlog and you have a figure worth something.
Two hours on a Tuesday evening? Sort by length and take something that fits. Holiday coming up? Go find the forty-hour game you have been circling for three years.
On the Deck
GameLynx is built for a Deck in your hands. The stick moves the selection, A chooses, X plays or installs. A bar along the bottom always says what the buttons do right now.
The button on the card starts the game through Steam, in Game Mode as readily as on the desktop.
Internal or SD card, chosen before the download starts, with the free space on both in front of you.
Not one screen that needs a mouse. Searching and sorting work on the buttons too.
A list to search, cards to choose, large cards to browse. Your choice is remembered.
While something is downloading the card counts the percentage, then turns into a play button on its own.
Hidden ones included, filled in with the descriptions Steam leaves blank, and sorted by how rare they are.
When a sign-in expires or a source stops answering, it is at the top of your list — with the button that fixes it beside it.
The drive
On a Deck this is a real decision: the internal disk is fast, the card is large. Steam asks afterwards in a window of its own, or does not ask at all. GameLynx asks where the decision is made, with the free space on each drive beside it.
If a game will not fit comfortably, the app says so before you start rather than twenty minutes into the download.
Wishlist
Every shop shouts that there is a discount. What you want to know is different: is this cheap for this game, or merely cheaper than yesterday. That needs a price history no shop will hand you.
GameLynx puts the lowest price that game has ever been anywhere next to the price today. Sitting at its record, and the app says so in as many words.
€12.49 in the sale
is what it has been. So wait.
Statistics
Steam keeps one total per game and nothing else. GameLynx builds a history of its own: at every sync it sees what changed and writes it down. After a few weeks you have charts Steam could never have drawn.
Two services, one list
Link your Steam account, your PlayStation account, or both. What you own is one library: the same cards, the same filters, the same hour counts. A small square in the corner of each card says where a game came from — and it only appears once there are genuinely two services to tell apart.
Signing in happens on Sony's own page. GameLynx keeps only the session it is handed back, and never writes anything to your account.
Deck, desktop, phone and browser
The build on your computer sits next to Steam and can read it: what is installed, what it takes up, the artwork you replaced, the collections you keep. Your phone and your browser have no Steam client to read and ask Steam's API instead, which answers a narrower question. They all write to the same backup, so what the computer learns is on the other two by the time you pick them up.
A grid with a rail beside it, driven entirely by the stick: A opens, B goes back, X plays or installs. It reads your Steam installation, so it knows what is on your drive, how much room it takes and which Steam collections you keep. Playing and installing happen from the app, including the choice between internal storage and the SD card. If Game Mode gives you a black window, the manual has the launch options. It is the only build that can see any of that, which is the reason to have it on the machine you play on rather than only where you browse.
The same library as a list of cards — tall artwork, the Family and Non-Steam labels, and one filter button instead of a bar full of chips. Your Steam collections are there to filter by, search looks through everything at once and says which list each result sits in, and the wishlist can ring once a day when something on it goes on sale. An offer opens in your own browser. Playing and installing are not there — a phone cannot — and family games arrive by way of the backup, since only the Steam client knows about them.
gamelynx.app/app opens the same library in a tab, and puts itself on a phone's home screen if you add it there. It signs in to Steam and to Google on its own and keeps everything on the device, exactly as the others do. On a wide window it lays itself out like the desktop build and on a narrow one like the phone. What it cannot do is play, install, or read a Steam client — there is none in a tab — so it is at its best alongside a computer that has one.
Your library, your hidden games, what you finished, the HowLongToBeat entries you matched by hand, your achievements and trophies, your wishlist — and the artwork you replaced by hand in Steam, which travels to your other devices scaled down. The backup carries all of it, including your settings and your sign-ins, and merges rather than overwrites.
Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. It opens in whichever your device is set to and falls back to English otherwise, and you can pick one yourself at any time. A few words stay put on purpose: achievements and trophies are what Steam and Sony call them, and HowLongToBeat's four measurements keep that site's own names, because the link to the page they came from is right underneath.
Yours, and nobody else's
GameLynx runs entirely on your own device. There is no backend your library ends up in, because there is no backend at all.
Your library lives in a database on the device itself.
Once a day, into a folder you can open. Nothing else in your Drive is touched.
On a train, at a campsite: the whole library stays visible, artwork and figures included.
New versions arrive in the background, with one button to restart into them.
The same library in your pocket, with the same figures and the same filters.
The app reads. All it ever asks is: start this game, or install it.
What it runs on
Every one of them works on its own: connect your Steam account and you have your library, your completion times and your achievements, wherever you installed it. What differs is how much they can see. A host sits on the machine you play on, next to Steam, and is the only one that can read the client itself — which games are installed and on which drive, how much room they take, the collections you keep, the family libraries you can reach. A companion has no client to read and asks Steam's API instead, which answers a narrower question. Run both and the companion gets the wider answer too.
Hostreads the Steam client on the machine
An AppImage. Add it to Steam as a non-Steam game and drive it with the stick.
GameLynx.AppImage
Companionworks on its own, sees more alongside a host
You do not have to, and nothing stops working without it. What it adds is the one
thing a companion cannot find out by itself. In Settings, sign in with Google on
each device. Once a day each writes what it has learned into a
GameLynx Backups folder in your Drive and reads what the others left
there — so your collections, your family library and what is installed where reach
your phone and your browser, and the completion times already looked up and the
playtime history never have to be gathered twice.
It is your Drive, not ours — there is no account here and no server in between. GameLynx can only see the files it creates itself; the rest of your Drive is closed to it. Each device keeps its own file and reads the others', so a change you make on one shows up on the rest. Skip it and everything still works, on that device alone.
Free, with no account here. The Windows and macOS builds are unsigned, so your system warns once on first launch.
GameLynx is free and stays free: no account here, no ads, nothing measured inside the app, nothing sold on. There is a tip jar for anyone who wants one — it pays for the domain and the hosting, and after that for a code signing certificate, which is the thing that would stop Windows and macOS warning you the first time you open a build made by one person in their spare time.
Nothing is behind it. No rewards, no tiers, no features waiting for a total to be reached.
Getting started
Take the file, put it with your other programs, and add it to Steam as a non-Steam game.
On a Deck the app already knows who is signed in. One key from Steam and you are through.
The first sync fetches everything. After that it keeps itself current, wishlist and prices included.
Questions
No. No price, no subscription, no adverts, no paid extras. It is a personal project.
Not with us. You connect your own Steam account with a key you get from Steam itself. If you want a backup in Google Drive you sign in with Google, and that part is optional.
On your device, in a database belonging to the app. There is no server of ours involved. The only place anything is sent is your own Drive, if you connect one.
No. GameLynx reads what Steam publishes and what the Steam client stores on your device. All it ever asks Steam to do is start or install a game. Hiding and marking things finished happens inside GameLynx only.
Yes. Add it to Steam as a non-Steam game and it starts like anything else. The whole interface is built for the controller.
From HowLongToBeat, submitted by players. If a match is wrong you pick the right entry yourself, and that choice is never overwritten afterwards.
From IsThereAnyDeal, which tracks prices across some fifty shops including the lowest a game has ever been. Only offers that hand over a Steam key are shown.
Everything keeps working except updating. Your library, your figures, the artwork and the achievement lists are all on the device.
But you finally know what you are starting.