How to disable auto-SteamVR launch on UE4 launch?

Development Platform & Builds XR Development
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1

Whenever I launch an Unreal Engine 4 project, regardless of whether that project is a VR project or not, it launches SteamVR on my behalf. How can I disable this?

2

Well, it took 5 minutes of poking around in settings… SteamVR has a Developer tab with ‘Start SteamVR when an application starts’.

3

Thank you. My graphics card screeches at me while SteamVR is active, so this helped a lot. :slight_smile:

4

Disable the SteamVR plugin from within the Editor in the Plugin configuration pane. (You may wish to also disable other VR systems you’re not supporting.) The Editor will need to be restarted.

5

Thx for info

6

This is the one I wanted. Thanks. :slight_smile:

7

'SteamVR has a Developer tab with ‘Start SteamVR when an application starts’. Thanks, That did it, saved me a lot more than five minutes!

8

This is what worked for me, disabling “Start SteamVR when an application starts” in SteamVR did nothing on my end

9

This is the correct answer. The above answer will disable Steam VR from launching for all VR apps. If you want to just disable it for Unreal you need to disable the plugin.

10

That is unticked, unreal engine still insists on starting steam vr. So annoying, I just want to do some logic unrelated to any vr input, but that thing keeps starting up. Also changes my audio device at times, even though the setting says to do nothing when started and stopped.

11

how to test if vr is launched or not ? one of my customer complained that his vr was launched when he started my game and i don’t know what is he talking about because I don’t have vr and the game run find . Perhaps i can just disable all vr plugin and make a small updates . any information ?

12

Same, even with the setting unchecked some unreal games do launch SteamVR in steamVR plugin is enabled. If I disable the plugin in my own projects it seems to fix the problem. There is also a way to enable VR through the command line with -vr so I wonder if there is a way to disable it too… hmm. It’s really annoying for me because my son like to play an alpha version of a game that has SteamVR enabled when the game doesn’t even support VR in the first place. So I have to make sure the headset is unplugged before I can fire up the game.

13

@nic-hartley see the most upvoted answer below (not the accepted one) and see if it helps you.

14

This doesn’t work either. Before I can even select a project to open – i.e. when I open Unreal from the Epic Games Launcher, or even if I start it independently – SteamVR starts. Just to make absolutely sure, I’ve removed the VR plugin on all of my projects. It still doesn’t work.

15

Already did; it doesn’t work either. I just gave up on telling people their solutions are wrong after trying every solution I could find and none of them working.

16

The way I’ve stopped SteamVR from auto-launching with different applications is by:

  1. Move the SteamVR folder away from inside “…/Steam/steamapps/common”, since applications can’t launch what they can’t find.
  2. Whenever you want to use VR, start it preemptively, using “…/SteamVR/bin/win64/vrstartup.exe” (or whichever OS you have), I also recommend creating a shortcut.
17

Did this. SteamVR still starts. This answer is wrong. It might have been correct at some point, but it no longer is.

18

same, on 4.16.2 disabling the occulus and steamvr plugins dosen’t prevent the two sfrom starting when Unreal Engine starts

19

As of 4.17.2 this solution worked for me. This should now be the accepted answer. @nic-hartley Id reinstall man. You are the 2%er

20

Could you maybe accept the better answer (the one from Philippe23 that’s been upvoted 20+ times) as your answer is a setting in Steam, not a way to fix the problem for a specific UE4 project.
The easy solution is to disable the Steam VR plugin (if you’re not using it).