How to make your Steam inventory public

Your inventory has its own privacy setting, separate from the rest of your profile. That means your profile can be public while your inventory stays locked, which is exactly the situation that makes trading, price checks, and inventory value tools come back empty. Flipping it takes about a minute and it is fully reversible, so there is no reason to leave it hidden if you need someone to see your items.

Here is how to do it on desktop and mobile, plus one setting most guides miss that keeps your value hidden even after you go public.

Set your inventory to public on desktop

Open Steam in a browser or the desktop client and go to your profile. In the client you can click your name at the top and pick View Profile.
Click Edit Profile.
Open the Privacy Settings tab.
Find the Inventory row under My Profile.
Set it to Public.
Changes save on their own. There is no save button to hunt for.

That is the whole process. Give Steam a moment to catch up, then reload whatever tool or trade page you were on.

Set your inventory to public on mobile

The Steam mobile app follows the same path with slightly different taps:

Open the Steam app and go to your profile.
Tap the menu and choose Edit Profile.
Open Privacy Settings.
Set Inventory to Public.

If the app is being stubborn, open steamcommunity.com in your phone browser and log in there instead. The browser version of the privacy page behaves the same as it does on desktop.

The three privacy levels

Steam gives your inventory the same three options it gives most profile settings, and the difference matters:

Public. Anyone can view your inventory, friend or not. This is the setting price tools and trade partners need.
Friends Only. Only people on your friends list can see it. Useful if you only trade with people you already know, but a stranger checking your items still gets nothing.
Private. Only you can see it. Every third-party tool returns zero, and trade offers cannot be built.

For trading, both parties generally need to be able to see each other's items, so Public or at least Friends Only is required to get anything done.

The setting that keeps your value hidden anyway

This is the part that catches people out. Steam has a separate option, worded along the lines of "Always keep my total inventory value private, even when others can see my inventory." It lives in the same Privacy Settings area, near the inventory control.

That checkbox does not hide your items. It hides the single combined value number Steam itself shows on your profile. So you can have a fully public inventory where every item is visible, yet Steam still refuses to display one total on the page. Third-party value tools read your items one by one and add them up themselves, so they can still produce a total even with that box ticked. But if you specifically want Steam's own profile to show your inventory value, leave that option unchecked.

In short: Inventory set to Public is what unblocks other people and outside tools. The total value private checkbox only controls the number Steam prints on your own profile.

Why you might be making it public

Most people land here for one of a few reasons. You are trying to sell or trade and the other person cannot see what you have. You want to run an inventory value check and it keeps returning nothing. Or a marketplace or price site asked you to set the inventory public before it could read your items. All three are solved by the same Public setting above.

When you are done, you can switch it straight back to Private. Nothing about going public is permanent, and toggling it does not affect your items, your trade history, or your account standing.

FAQ

How do I make my Steam inventory private again? Same path in reverse. Edit Profile, Privacy Settings, set Inventory to Private. It changes instantly.

I set it to public but a tool still shows nothing. Give it a minute and reload, since Steam does not always update the moment you change the setting. If it still fails, the profile itself may be private, or Steam's servers may be busy. See Steam inventory not showing.

Is my whole profile public if my inventory is public? No. Inventory privacy is its own setting. You can have a public inventory on an otherwise Friends Only or private profile, and the reverse is true too. The make your profile public guide covers the profile-level settings.

Does a public inventory put my items at risk? Public just means people can see your items, not touch them. Nobody can take anything by viewing an inventory. The real risk is only ever handing your login to a fake site, which no legitimate tool asks for.

Can I make only one game's inventory public? No. The Public setting applies to your Steam inventory as a whole, not per game.