I've been testing Steamac, which was revealed and discussed here a week ago.

TLDR: It's legit!

You can now run most of your Steam games on your Mac, and the software is free and open source. It supports the latest Unreal Engine 5 games because it works by translating Vulkan 1.4 calls to Metal.

WORKING

Al the games I tested that just work:

• Bioshock
• Broforce
• Command & Conquer Remastered collection
• Cycles (Unreal Engine 5)
• Destroy All Humans
• Dishonored
• Crysis 3 Remastered
• Dust Front
• Dying Light
• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (but with visual glitches, see below)
• FireWatch
• FTL: Faster Than Light
• Half Life 2
• High Hell
• Hotline Miami
• Into the Breach
• Islanders
• Journey
• Kerbal Space Program
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps
• Outer Wilds
• Portal
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• Shadow Warrior
• Slay the Spire
• Sniper Elite 2 remaster
• Sprawl Zero
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (very slow first run)
• Star Wars: Republic Commando
• Steamworld Dig
• System Shock (remake)
• The Spirit and the Mouse
• Titanfall 2
• Total Annihilation (despite being marked as 'incompatible with Steam Frame')
• Undertale
• Unknownz (Unreal Engine 5)

Some games that required some tweaking:

• Assassins Creed 2 (reason: requires manual installation of Ubisoft Connect)
• Batman Arkham Asylum (reason: NVIDIA PhysX)
• Mass Effect 2 (reason: NVIDIA PhysX)
• Singularity (reason: NVIDIA PhysX)
• Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection (properties -> compatibility -> select Proton v10)
• Halo Master Chief collection (properties -> compatibility -> select Proton v10)

NOT WORKING

Games I tested that didn't work (yet):

• Batman Arkham City (but there is a native Mac OS version, so it doesn't matter)
• Doom Eternal (complains about unrecognized "Venus" GPU)
• Hitman: Blood Money
• Robocop Rogue City (but there is a native Mac OS version, so it doesn't matter)

These games wouldn't run because Anti-cheat is not supported:

• Battefield: Bad Company (reason: Punkbuster anti cheat)
• Warhammer 40.000: Space Marine 2 (reason: Easy Anti Cheat)

You can find more details about my testing in this Github issue.

What is Steamac?

The project runs the Steam Frame (VR) version of Steam OS on your Mac inside a lightweight virtual machine. This comes with FEX, which translates games so they work on ARM CPU's.

Even better, it uses the brand new release of the KosmicKrisp translation layer, which has only been out for two weeks, and is now officially conformant to Vulkan 1.4. In other words: the games in the virtual machine see a very modern Vulkan 1.4 GPU!

What are the downsides?

- Your Mac should have at least twice as much memory as the game's minimal requirement. So a 16GB Mac can handle games that require a minimum of 8GB of ram, for example.

- The first time you run a modern game it's often very slow and stuttery because it's doing shader compilation in the background. But it only has to do that once.

What are the upsides?

- It's free

- It's SteamOS inside a wrapper, so you already know how to use it.

- Whenever Valve improves FEX and updates SteamOS, you get that update too.

I'm not affiliated with the project, I'm just a fan (whose mind is blown).

I've been building VeRantyx, which lets you play Windows PC VR games on an Apple Silicon Mac.
I started it in May, paused for five months, and picked it back up recently.

The latest version ("vxrt") uses no Wine: the Windows game and the real Windows SteamVR run on
VXRuntime, a Windows runtime written from scratch for Apple Silicon, with its own Direct3D 11 →
Metal shader translator. Steam is the normal Mac Steam client with your own account.

Video: MacBook Pro M1 Max (left) vs MacBook Air M5 (right), both via the Vision Pro's ALVR app.
Full video: https://youtu.be/YwznYiAXqBg

This isn't a benchmark – the two recordings were made separately, so please look at how smooth
each one is, not loading times. Sorry it's mostly dark areas: I love games but I'm not very good
at them, and I've only reached Chapter 2.

Game frame rate from the logs:
- M1 Max (32-core GPU, 64 GB), 3K preset (1440×1620 per eye): ~50–55 fps
- M5 MacBook Air (10-core GPU, 24 GB), ALVR defaults: ~30 fps

Recommended settings:
- Pro/Max Macs: VERANTYX_ALVR=1 VXRT_VR_QUALITY=3k (Vision Pro app: VXRT_VR_QUALITY=3k, 60 fps on M1 Max)
- MacBook Air / base chips: VERANTYX_ALVR=1 with no preset. Heavier presets make the picture warp
when you turn your head (the headset shows 90 Hz and stretches older frames).
- 5 GHz Wi-Fi (80 MHz channel helps a lot)

Headsets: Vision Pro with its own app (hand tracking + Joy-Con, no PS VR2 controllers needed), or
any ALVR client – tested with the Vision Pro's ALVR app, with game audio and hand tracking.

** Quest owners: could you test it? ** I don't own a Quest, so it's untested there. It should work
(VeRantyx uses ALVR's open-source streaming core v20.14.1, unchanged, and Quest's ALVR client
speaks the same protocol), but I can't check controllers or buttons myself.
1. Install the ALVR client v20.x on the Quest (ALVR's GitHub releases or SideQuest)
2. On the Mac: scripts/setup_vxrt.sh (see README), then VERANTYX_ALVR=1 scripts/launch_vxrt_alyx.sh
(first start builds the ALVR part; needs Rust: https://rustup.rs)
3. Open ALVR on the Quest on the same 5 GHz Wi-Fi – it connects by itself
Please tell me your Mac and Quest model, and what works (picture, tracking, controllers, buttons,
audio). If something fails, attach ~/Library/Application Support/VeRantyx/ALVR/session_log.txt.
No haptics yet; USB is untested (use Wi-Fi).

Runs: Half-Life: Alyx, The Lab, Google Earth VR. Not yet: Direct3D 12, Vulkan, most other titles;
anti-cheat is never worked around. You need your own SteamVR and games – nothing from Valve or
Microsoft is included.

Source and setup: https://github.com/Ag3497120/VeRantyx
Feedback and bug reports welcome!

https://github.com/macprotips/NFSUnboundFix

these 4 games running as good as native ports, mac gaming is really good thank to crossover

Forked the windows uncharted app by SuperMedo into a native apple silicon app, Launched without FSR, and FG, though it supports it but but adds stutter, looks horrendous and so much ghosting.

This works 30+ FPS without screen recording, runs ok, M4 Base Mac mini, can be much better but playable, All done in CGPT co-pilot VS code on the M4, I'll see if it can be optimized and if Metal FX can be activated instead of FSR, should run smoother. If it reaches good vesion i'll uplaod it, but i believe others will do that before "i" can.

I made SWTOR on Mac, a free, open-source macOS app that sits on top of the official SWTOR Mac app and swaps its graphics layer for a faster one. You install SWTOR as usual, open SWTOR on Mac, click Install, and keep playing from the official app. There's no Wine bottle to set up.

It's unofficial. Broadsword doesn't endorse or support it, so please read the fine print at the bottom before you try it.

Getting started

1. Install (or assuming you already have installed) SWTOR from swtor.com as usual and log in once, so the official Mac app is set up.
2. Download the DMG from the latest release (about 7 MB) and drag SWTOR on Mac into Applications.
3. Open it, accept the notice and click Install. It downloads a newer Wine engine (about 270 MB) and sets everything up, which takes about a minute. Your game settings, UI layouts and key bindings come along.
4. Start SWTOR from the official app as usual. The first minutes of play may stutter while shaders are compiled and cached.

The app is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other Mac app. It doesn't ship or change any SWTOR files: the launcher and game client are Broadsword's, installed by them and run unmodified. Uninstall puts the official app back exactly as Broadsword ships it, and copies your game settings back.

What works

The game renders through d9mt straight to Metal 4 at full Retina resolution, with vsync and Game Mode. On my M5 Max at 4K it holds a locked 60 fps in zones and stays smooth in a busy fleet apart from players loading in. If the official launcher updates its Wine, SWTOR on Mac hooks itself back in. The app checks for updates once a day, never while you're playing, and installs them when you click Install. Settings let you switch Retina, vsync, Game Mode, the Metal HUD and a memory profile. If something goes wrong, SWTOR on Mac → Collect Logs… saves a zip to your desktop.

Compared with the official Mac app

The official app runs the Windows client in an older Wine (CrossOver 23.7 based), and Direct3D 9 goes through Wine's OpenGL renderer, which Apple deprecated years ago. That's where the tearing and uneven frame rates come from. SWTOR on Mac keeps Broadsword's launcher and game exactly as they are and replaces only that layer: a newer Wine and a Direct3D 9 to Metal 4 driver, plus a few macOS fixes.

Technical bits

• Game: a Wine engine built from CrossOver 24.0.7 sources (Sikarugir build), running the 64-bit client under Rosetta 2, with msync.
• Graphics: d9mt, a Direct3D 9 to Metal 4 driver. I maintain the fork of neo773's d9mt-v2; its SWTOR fixes include missing lights and effects (shader switches were frozen), black specks in clouds, broken MSAA, stretched skinned models, a 3 GB memory leak, background shader compiling with a persistent cache, and pacing fixes for vsync and hidden windows.
• Launcher: Broadsword's own Mac launcher, unmodified. SWTOR on Mac hooks into the Wine it starts, keeps the launcher frozen in the background while you play (otherwise it takes the game's Wine down with it when it quits) and cleans up after the game.
• Shipping: Developer ID signed and notarized; updates via Sparkle 2, EdDSA-signed, with delta downloads; a small launchd job (it only runs when the launcher's Wine folder changes) re-applies the hook after launcher updates.
• License: zlib for the app's code and d9mt, LGPL for d9mt's Wine bridge.

Limitations and fine print

Not affiliated. SWTOR on Mac isn't made, endorsed or supported by Broadsword. Broadsword doesn't support third-party modifications. Use it at your own risk.

Support comes only from me, as a GitHub issue or to Pharaphobia on Discord. Please don't send SWTOR on Mac problems to SWTOR customer support. They can't help with it.

Apple silicon only, macOS 26 or later. You need the official SWTOR Mac app installed first.

Rosetta: Apple keeps it fully available through macOS 27. macOS 28 (expected fall 2027) keeps only a subset aimed at older games, and both the official Mac app and this one depend on Rosetta today. My plan is a native arm64 Wine with x86 emulation and an arm64 build of d9mt, tested well before macOS 28. And of course unless we get DX12 working in the meantime.

Links

Repo and README: https://github.com/jdrly/swtor-on-mac Latest release: https://github.com/jdrly/swtor-on-mac/releases/latest Issues and roadmap: https://github.com/jdrly/swtor-on-mac/issues d9mt (the graphics driver): https://github.com/jdrly/d9mt Sister project for SWG Legends: https://github.com/jdrly/swgl-on-mac

Hi! I'm a solo dev and my cozy island game runs natively on Mac, no translation layer needed. It's a universal build for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

You play as a cat on a sleepy island: fishing, bug catching, a museum, 24 animal neighbors, decorating, and an island planner where you can reshape cliffs and rivers. Steam Cloud keeps your save in sync if you also play on a PC.

It launches on Steam on October 22, 20% off in the first week.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5369050/Glowtide_Isle/

Happy to answer any Mac questions!

(Some music and sound effects are AI-made and edited by me, and I used AI coding assistants. Disclosed on Steam.)

PearSilicone - Native iOS -> macOS Metal compatibility layer. Not an emulator. No bypass, no mods. Genshin Impact running on Mac mini m1 at High/Highest 60 FPS Overclocked, fluid. Just BYO IPA. https://github.com/denizomer10/PearSilicone available now on GitHub https://youtu.be/FKE-6lJicYU

Everything on high, didn't have to change stuff up at all in the settings, could've went ultra but chose high to be safe.

FPS limit on 90, fairly stable early game. Haven't played much.

Using crossover. Running on latest MacOS. I doubt anyone would have problems with this game.

I installed the latest NotProton, seems to be a great tool. BUT:

I've been using Crossover (mostly preview) to run Windows Steam for a while now, and have tons of saved games across god knows how many titles.

NotProton seems to make new C: drives for every game, and so every game thinks it's the first time it's been run on my Mac. And my save games are not reflected therein.

Is there a guide or a simple way to retrieve my saves and stick them wherever NotProton will find them?

I'm worried there's going to be lots of manual searching for random savegame locations and copying stuff over by hand..

ugh

thanks

Hi

The video I'm referring to is here: https://youtu.be/4XJCn6YxzCU

Timestamp: 5:43

It seems pretty obvious to me that Apple could have easily thrown their weight and money around and compelled companies to run anti-cheat on Mac. This whole saga with the RTX Spark made me not only appreciate the miracle that is Apple's M chip. It also made it clearer that Apple doesn't really give a shit about gaming. It makes it all the more impressive to see what is possible despite Apple's arrogant support. They will create things like GPTK and Rosetta, but then they will refuse to work with the most prominent companies to actually make gaming on Mac happen.

But aside from apple, would running anti-cheat on Spark help the Mac situation in any way?

I've been experimenting with a custom Vulkan implementation using Dozen + D3DMetal in my WineForge project, and I've finally managed to get Enshrouded to launch and reach the main menu on macOS! This is still a very early experimental test. There are graphical glitches, rendering issues, and plenty of optimization work ahead. However, the fact that the game can reach the main menu is already a promising first step. The bigger picture is much more interesting. If I can get this implementation stable and properly optimized, it could potentially open the door for other Vulkan-based games, including Detroit: Become Human, which currently presents significant compatibility challenges on macOS. The goal isn't just to make Enshrouded work. It's to build a more general Vulkan compatibility solution for macOS gaming. There's still a long way to go, and I can't promise anything yet. But I'm curious to see how far I can push this. Let's see how much performance and compatibility we can squeeze out of it.

Red Dead Redemption 2 running beautifully on my Mac mini M5 Pro! 🤠🎮

This game is absolutely beautiful, and I’m genuinely impressed by how well it runs on my Mac mini M5 Pro.

For the very first time, I’m using CrossOver for gaming, and the experience has been amazing so far. I’m really enjoying exploring this incredible world!

I’d love to hear from other Mac gamers. What games are you playing on your Mac, and how has your experience been with CrossOver? Share your experiences and recommendations! 🍎🎮

I just got pes 2013 to run on my macbook neo with crossover, it took a little while and it wasn't launching at first but I figured it out and got it running flawlessly😍. You just need a couple files and for anyone interested, I'll guide you in the CS.

If you haven't see this, then you now must!

Go follow this thread:
Project Reclaimer on Apple Silicon Macs: https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/s/TRRj0C1cnq

and the dev Website: https://projectreclaimer.dev/download

and the Mac Port: https://github.com/mattromano/project-reclaimer-mac-port

Decided to try out 1.7 to see how well it performed. Testing on my Mac Mini M4 16GB.

1.6 with 439 mods: Startup time is 6mins and 4 seconds from Steam launch till load screen. Honestly massive improvement from 1.5 especially since 1.6 brought a native client.

1.7 with same 439 mods: Startup time was 1 min flat. 1.7 is a native build as well.

To say that’s an improvement is an understatement. Shaving five mins off load time with a complex mod set is an impressive feat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2PVUeov3_A

Will be sharing compatibility layer files for this roughly at the same time as Arc Raiders since a lot of the runtime patches could be shared between them due to very similar engine, I have some other games that I would really like to get playable but once current projects are wrapped up taking a break from it

My cosmic byet controller isent working on hollow knight it work fine with oth games but not with hollw knight can someone help me solve ts issueq