Steam app for macOS gets hardware acceleration for faster performance

The latest Steam client update brings “hardware acceleration” to the app for macOS. The new feature would deliver faster performance when browsing for games on the platform and an enhanced user experience. The new “hardware acceleration” feature is also available in Linux.

Recently, Apple announced new tools in macOS Sonoma to improve the gaming experience on the Apple Silicon Macs like Game Mode and Game Porting Tool for developers to bring their Windows games to macOS easily by translating DirectX12 into Metal 3.

Metal 3 brings massive new updates to Apple’s graphics and compute API. These updates include MetalFX Upscaling, fast resource loading, offline compilation, mesh shaders, optimized ray tracing, and accelerated machine learning.

New hardware acceleration in the Steam app for macOS brings responsive UI and more

Building on Apple’s latest gaming tools and with the goal to deliver the same gaming experience across platforms, the Steam Link app for macOS now allows users to enable hardware acceleration to enjoy a more responsive interface, improved scrolling experience, and animations.

The technical work in this update makes it possible to enable hardware acceleration for the Mac & Linux versions of Steam, bringing them up to par with Windows. You should see snappier animations, scrolling and more responsive UI. – Steam

The new Steam client update also features an overhauled in-game overlay, new notes functionality with image posting, offline support and text formatting, new pinning functionality, and several changes in notifications, visual and stability, controller configuration, and under-the-hood improvements.