Steam will soon fully support Macs equipped with Apple’s own chips. In the latest beta version of the Steam client spotted by 9to5Mac, Valve says that “the Steam Client and Steam Helper applications are now powered by Apple Silicon.”
This means that Steam no longer needs to use Rosetta 2 to run on Macs with M-series chips. Rosetta 2 is an emulator that allows Intel-based programs to run on Apple Silicon’s ARM architecture. The built-in support for Apple Silicon should make Steam run smoother.
The update follows Apple’s announcement that it will stop releasing major updates for Intel-based Macs after macOS Tahoe. The company also confirmed that Rosetta 2 will only be available in macOS 27. “After that date, we will retain some of Rosetta’s functionality to support older, unmaintained games that rely on Intel-based frameworks,” Apple said.
You can try out the Steam beta by opening the program on your Mac and choosing Steam > Preferences > UI. From there, look for the heading “Customer participation in the beta” and select “Update Steam Beta” from the drop-down menu. Steam will then prompt you to restart the program.
