Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. How tos

How to turn on the Steam FPS counter

Add as a preferred source on Google
A person running Steam on the M4 MacBook Pro. Rocket League is up on the screen
Chris Hagan / Digital Trends

How many frames per second (FPS) your PC or laptop can hit can make or break even the best PC games. Too low, and the game will feel like a jittery mess. Some people have a keen eye for spotting a game's FPS, but even then, it is hard to tell in the middle of a multiplayer game or cross-platform game. Thankfully, Steam has a built-in feature that can show you exactly how your rig is holding up while playing and help you decide if you need to change some settings, especially with some of the intensive upcoming PC games. Here's how to quickly turn on Steam's FPS counter.

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • Steam

A dynamic collection in Steam.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

How to turn on Steam's FPS counter

Because Steam has this feature as part of the launcher itself, it will work on any game you can run through Steam. It only takes a second to turn on or off, but you do need to do it before launching a game.

Step 1: Launch Steam and click on Steam in the top left corner.

The Steam homepage settings.
Valve

Step 2: Choose Settings.

Step 3: Choose In-game and then scroll down to find the In-game FPS counter drop-down.

The steam in-game settings.
Valve

Step 4: Choose if you want the FPS counter to be displayed on either the top left, top right, bottom left, or bottom right corner of your screen.

Step 5: You can also toggle on the High contrast color switch if you would rather the numbers be red as opposed to gray.

As soon as you boot up your next game, the current FPS will be displayed wherever you chose until you go back into the settings and turn it off.

Jesse Lennox
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jesse Lennox covers all things gaming but has a specific interest in all things PlayStation, JRPGs, and experimental indies…
Phantom Blade Zero makes me think Sony might have a point about going all digital
Physical games still matter, but when the disc isn't a complete copy of the game, the argument for keeping it becomes harder to make.
Phantom Blade Zero Featured Image

I'm a big supporter of physical games. There's something satisfying about owning a disc, lending it to a friend, or grabbing a bargain without waiting for a digital storefront to approve the price. But Phantom Blade Zero has me questioning one of the biggest arguments in the physical-versus-digital debate. The game's digital version launches on October 29, 2026, while its physical PS5 editions, including Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate versions, won't arrive until 2027.

And there's another wrinkle: the digital version reportedly needs up to 134GB of storage, raising questions about how much of the game can actually fit on a standard Blu-ray disc. A standard PS5 Ultra HD Blu-ray disc maxes out at 100GB, so Phantom Blade Zero may need to ship across multiple discs or require players to download additional data to finish installing it. Either way, the idea of popping in a disc and having the complete game ready to play gets a little murkier.

Read more
Nintendo Switch 2 jailbreak breakthrough shows what AI can do, but it’s not a one-click hack
The software-only exploit works on the latest firmware, but it's tethered and still has significant limitations.
Nintendo Switch 2

The Nintendo Switch 2 has reportedly been jailbroken, and AI helped crack the code. Developer Sammy Hajhamid, aka pepsipu, used OpenAI's Codex to help exploit the console, even modding Mario Kart World with the likes of Peter Griffin and Hatsune Miku. But before anyone celebrates an unlocked Nintendo playground, there's a catch: the exploit is tethered, not a full-blown custom firmware jailbreak.

AI helped crack the Switch 2, but it wasn't a one-click job

Read more
Xbox Cloud Gaming gets a standalone pay-as-you-go option
The service starts at $3.99 for 10 hours, and unused playtime won’t expire until you use it up.
Xbox Cloud Gaming

Microsoft may already be putting pieces of its rumored Game Pass overhaul into place. A recent report claimed that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is planning a major rethink of the subscription service that could let players pay separately for features such as cloud gaming, multiplayer, and console-only games. Xbox has now started testing a pay-as-you-go version of Cloud Gaming that does not require a Game Pass subscription.

Xbox Cloud Gaming now has an hourly price

Read more