Steam is about to deliver a major upgrade for Mac gamers with Apple’s in-house M-series chips. According to the latest Steam client beta revealed by 9to5Mac, Valve confirms that the “Steam Client and Steam Helper apps now run natively on Apple Silicon.” This means that Steam will no longer rely on Rosetta 2—the emulator that enables Intel-based apps to run smoothly on Apple Silicon’s ARM architecture. Native support for Apple Silicon promises to enhance performance, providing a smoother gaming experience on newer Macs.
This exciting development comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement that it will cease launching major updates for Intel-based Macs after macOS Tahoe. Apple also clarified that Rosetta 2 will only be available through macOS 27, with some limited functionality retained to support older, unmaintained gaming titles that depend on Intel frameworks.
Interested users can try out the Steam beta on their Macs by opening Steam, navigating to Settings > Interface, and selecting “Steam Beta Update” under the “Client Beta Participation” section. After choosing the beta, Steam will prompt you to relaunch the app to start enjoying the native support for Apple Silicon.
