Valve has finally done what Mac gamers have been waiting for: released a native version of the Steam client for Apple Silicon. The update, delivered quietly through the Steam Client Beta channel, drops the Rosetta 2 translation layer and runs directly on Apple’s M-series chips.
That alone eliminates a major performance bottleneck, giving users a faster, smoother experience that actually feels modern. It comes at a crucial time, as Apple announced during WWDC 2025 that macOS Tahoe 26 will be the last major release to support Intel Macs. With Rosetta 2 set to be phased out completely by macOS 28, Valve’s move is timely—and necessary.
Until now, Steam on Apple Silicon has relied on Intel emulation through Rosetta 2. That meant clunky UI performance, especially in the Chromium-based interface that powers the Steam Store, Library, and Community pages. Everything from launching the app to switching tabs came with extra load time and noticeable lag. With the beta now running natively, users are reporting dramatically faster launch speeds, improved responsiveness, and smoother scrolling throughout the client. Even basic actions like navigating between sections no longer feel sluggish. These improvements may seem minor on paper, but for anyone using Steam regularly on a Mac, the difference is immediate.
The biggest change under the hood is the shift of the Chromium Embedded Framework to support Apple Silicon directly. This update transforms Steam into a fully universal app, optimized for the architecture it’s running on. No redesign or aesthetic changes have been introduced yet, but the focus here is clearly on performance, not visuals. And in practice, it pays off. The native client finally feels like it’s catching up to the Mac hardware it’s running on, particularly for users on newer M-series Macs like the M1 Ultra or M3.
To try it out, Mac users just need to enable the Steam Beta Client through the Interface tab in Preferences, select “Steam Beta Update” from the dropdown menu, and restart the app. The updated version is about 230MB and can be confirmed in Activity Monitor by checking that Steam is labeled as “Kind: Apple” rather than “Kind: Intel.”
This update doesn’t change the state of game compatibility—Windows-only titles will still require tools like Crossover or Parallels—but it does improve the client’s native performance on macOS.
