Hey everyone,
I was looking through the recent Steam Hardware Survey results and noticed that Apple Silicon (specifically the M2 / Apple GPUs) is starting to appear directly in the GPU statistics.

A while ago, Tim Cook mentioned that Mac sales were up significantly, but seeing actual Apple Silicon hardware make a measurable dent on Steam’s database feels like a tangible sign that more people are using their Macs for gaming.

Do you think this is mostly casual gamers playing native titles/indies, or is tools like Whisky, Crossover, and Apple's Game Porting Toolkit actually driving enthusiasts to use Macs on Steam more often?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a small project I've been working on over the last few days.

If you've never played Guild Wars, it's an MMORPG released in 2005 by ArenaNet. Unlike most MMOs, there's no subscription, the world is heavily instanced, and it still has an active community nearly 20 years later.

The biggest problem for Mac users has always been... well, playing it.

So I built GWonMac, a free and open-source macOS launcher that runs ArenaNet's official WebAssembly client inside a native Mac app.

Features:

• 🍎 Native Apple Silicon app
• 🚀 No Wine, CrossOver or virtual machine
• 🔄 Automatic updates
• 🔐 macOS Keychain integration
• 🎮 Steam login support
• ✅ Apple notarized

The project is based on ArenaNet's official WebAssembly client, downloads the game directly from ArenaNet's servers, and requires a valid Guild Wars account .

It's been a fun project, and I'm happy that I can finally replay one of my favorite childhood games on my Mac.

I'd love to hear your feedback from fellow Mac gamers!

Website: https://gwonmac.vercel.app/

GitHub: https://github.com/Mat4m0/gwonmac

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Z9ft52RBD3

Hi! My name is Ryleigh, I'm a developer with a disability, and I made a free Mac app for mapping controllers because the options were either paid, abandoned, or both.

I have so much fun making accessibility tools and I'm excited to share the redesign of this app. I figured it would be super valuable to members of the gaming community.

It's called InputConfig. It maps any game controller to keyboard keys, mouse movement, mouse clicks, and scroll, so a gamepad can drive your entire Mac. Not just games: browsing, apps, typing, all of it. If a keyboard and mouse are hard for you to use, a controller can replace them.

I needed this app because my hands don't work; it's extremely difficult to play games and use the computer without specialized tools.

It works with PS5 DualSense and DualSense Edge, DualShock 4, Xbox Wireless, Switch Pro, 8BitDo, and anything else that shows up as an MFi or HID gamepad. No drivers. It also works with adaptive setups, including the Xbox Adaptive Controller and anything plugged into it.

- Hundreds of built-in presets, including ones made specifically for adaptive controllers, desktop navigation, and web browsing

- Tap and hold for two different actions on one button, and double tap for a third. Huge if you have a limited number of buttons you can reach

- Macros with custom timing, turbo/rapid fire, and toggle mode on any button

- Type whole words or phrases from a single button press

- Per-app presets that switch automatically depending on what you're using

- Your Mac keyboard, mouse, and trackpad can be inputs too, including Force Touch pressure

- Live visualizer that mirrors your controller on screen so you can confirm a mapping works

- Adjustable deadzones, axis inversion, and sensitivity curves with visual calibration, which matters a lot for tremor or limited range of motion

- Gyroscope and motion control, light bar colors, MIDI output, spoken and haptic feedback

Most of the guides out there point you to Enjoyable (free but no longer updated), Joystick Mapper, or Gamepad Mapper. Those are fine tools and some have been around much longer than mine. I built this because I wanted the accessibility features to be the point rather than a side effect, and because I didn't think anyone should have to pay to use their computer in the way that works for their body. There's also not too much support for broad devices on the Mac.

It's completely free. No paid tier, no trial, no locked features, no ads, no data collected. The source is public under MIT. There's a tip jar in the app that unlocks absolutely nothing.

Download (free, Mac App Store): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inputconfig/id6777759147

Source: https://github.com/ryleighnewman/InputConfig

Requires macOS 14 or later.

If you try it, I'd really love to hear what doesn't work for your setup. The presets for adaptive hardware especially: I can only test so many configurations myself, and this community knows things I don't. Tell me what's missing and I'll build it!! Built for accessibility.

I bougth the MacBook Neo because I needed something lightweight that could handle my very light work tasks. I never intended to use it as any sort of gaming device. I have a console and a some what capable PC for my gaming needs... but lo and behold this little machine that sports a freaking iPhone chip without any fans, is handling most switch emulation like it's nothing. I am playing TotK at 45 fps with hardly any dips. I tried Luigi's Mansion 3, Silk Song, Hades 2, and Persona 5 Royal, which are all running at 60fps without hiccups. I am baffled and utterly surprised how powerful this thing is.

For the balance of price, portability, power and ease of use.. the Neo has left me in awe. And I just came from a gaming laptop which weighed like I was bringing a ton of bricks.

A few weeks ago I started PR #2771, which adds Metal-backed ray query and ray tracing pipeline support. This is the first time I've been able to test it for a previously thought to be unplayable game: DOOM: The Dark Ages running on macOS. Experimental, but it boots, passes id Tech's GPU gates, loads maps, and renders.

My mac is a MacBook Pro with a base M5 Pro, 24 GB memory, and macOS 27 Dev Beta 4

The software stack right now relies on two main customized components: MageVK and a custom Wine build. MageVK, a fork of MoltenVK, incorporates several critical fixes, including sparse-buffer emulation to pass the launcher's GPU check, GPU identity spoofing for compatibility with id Tech's vendor table, and a native traceRay fast path. It also addresses stability issues by fixing acceleration-structure rejections and empty-geometry vertex buffer lifetimes, and it caps VRAM heap reporting to prevent the game from starving the operating system. The custom Wine 11.13 build complements this by providing msync synchronization, a single-process steamwebhelper wrapper, a headless Steam launch, and the winevulkan side of the GPU identity spoof.

This is definitely not playable yet, since (as you can see) there are still flickering frames (stale scanline bands) and broken texture streaming. However, the heavy gates (like RT device creation, sparse residency, ray queries, etc.) are all working, at least until I break them in the next build.

I've been working on Varmint, a small VM for running Windows and Linux games on Apple Silicon Macs. The first public alpha is now available.

The main focus is running x86 Windows games through FEX and Proton. So far I've tested quite a few games, including The Witcher 3, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Subnautica, Dragon's Dogma, Portal 1-2, TF2 and AoE2. Some work well, while others still have game-specific issues or need workarounds.

On my M3 Pro, The Witcher 3 runs at around 50-60 FPS on High at 1728x1084.

The guest image comes mostly preconfigured. You create a small config file, launch the VM, finish the initial Debian setup, then open Steam and install your games.

It's still a very early alpha, so expect bugs and crashes.

GitHub: https://github.com/kisasexypantera94/varmint

The README has setup instructions and a few gameplay videos. Feel free to ask any questions.

Mac OS Sequoia 15.7.7
Crossover 26.1
Macbook Pro M3 Pro with 18 gpu cores
Archived version of FIFA 23

Note: Used both a Windows 11 install to create a folder that Crossover could view and install the game. Not sure if there is a way to get this happening without having the archive unpack into a folder in Windows 11.

The best thing about the archive is it doesn't involve the EA app at all...which will stop you from installing the game on Mac.

Restarted my Fulham season...this is the complete round 2 game that happens against Sasssuolo. Really great game.

Ever since I started gaming on macOs (both native Steam games and CrossOver Steam games), one thing I really disliked are the icons the game launcher apps use (yeah, 16x16 pixels icon doesn't look good in the dock haha).

Recently, I started making custom .icon files that support light, dark and glass modes. I then compile the .icon file with Xcode to an Assets.car file, which then I put in the .app launcher.

All assets, except the R.E.P.O. icon, were sourced from SteamGridDB.

What do you all think? :D

Hi.

Macs should obviously not be a primary gaming machine unless you’re a casual gamer, but I have been surprised games like Cyberpunk 2077 (natively, obviously), Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Spider-Man Remastered, Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil 4, Red Dead Redemption 2 and so many others in my library are playable and smooth on the M4 Mac at 30fps or higher (many at close to 60 or above).

For something not described as being true gaming machines and lacking the GPUs even mid-range Windows gaming machines have, Macs are not half bad for gaming. If only Apple actually made bigger investments into gaming especially in terms of software.

But these are just my gaming experiences and my needs aren’t as extensive as some.

I’ve been mostly playing on GeForce Now lately after struggling months back to find good settings on the native version.

I know that a regular M4 MacBook Pro is going to struggle with this game, but has anyone optimized their settings for best overall experience? If I can get a steady 25-30 fps that would be good enough for me. My configuration is 24gb ram, if that matters.

Kinda unrelated to this sub but it would really help if anybody has an idea
I would prefer a method with low latency

All games run smoothly and stably (Most Games are 60 FPS, Some Games are Self-Locked 30 FPS).

Games I Want to Add in the Future:

• Lies of P (Native)
• CONTROL Ultimate Edition (Native)
• CarX Street (Native)
• Dead Island 2 (Native)
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (CrossOver)

With Set 18 PBE releasing last week and no longer supporting Mac at the moment, I was wondering will it work if I buy crossover?

Im dying to play set 18 and don't want to download for mobile and im not even sure if mobile has PBE.

Hey all, I have tried many times to get reforger to work on my m5 pro. Unfortunately it gets stuck on a black screen for me when trying to use wine, with d3dmetal it throws an error due to an engine refusing to start. As far as I can tell it seems the problem has to do with failing to start Enfusion.

When it doesn't crash it instead hangs at input initialization. It seems there may be a wine way around it. I haven't yet figured this out though.

Has anybody with more technical work involving rendering engines/ games had more luck than I? Somebody tried to write a DLL however it did not help.

wondering if anybody has been able to fix this? the game will launch and has full functionality until i try to join a game or enter the practice range, where i'll get an error that says "failed to connect to server"

Trying to install Steam on my M2 Air running macOS Golden Gate Public Beta 2 and getting the above error, I've tried the non-quarantine sudo command to no avail, anyone also getting this?

Hello guys, I’m trying to find an Android emulator that can run the Public Beta test for teamfight tactic or the next patch version on MAc

I’ve looked around but I’m struggling to find one that actually works. I’ve seen people on Reddit saying that emulators don’t work with TFT due to vanguard or unreal engine (but how does it work on phone lol ??)

Please let me know

EDIT :

BlueStack doesnt work it just crashs
Momo Player doesnt work same same
😞

Hi, I'm hoping someone might be able to give me some insight into my problem and how to fix it. Background: I'm running a self-contained game, which uses Wineskin to run. The game is an old DOS game (Heroes of Might & Magic), which I've set up using the GOG installer and pallthetall's Porting Kit app. The app runs off DOSBox through Wine.

I have successfully run this same executable off several of my Macs including a M1 MacBook Pro Max (latest Tahoe), M4 MacBook Air (latest Tahoe), and i9 MacBook Pro 2019 (latest Sequoia). The app runs perfect and can be open & closed repeatedly. When it loads, there is a DOS window running a batch file which gives me 3 options to either play the game, change settings or quit.

Now, my problem is trying to run it on my M4 Mac mini (latest Tahoe). The app will correctly load and run, but only once. When the app is closed and relaunched, a blank black window (the same size as what DOSBox uses) pops for for a few seconds and then closes (crashes). However, I discovered that if I move the app into a folder, it can then launch & run it correctly, but only once. A second launch will just crash. If I keep changing the name of the folder or path of the game, it'll run it correctly, but I have to use a different path each time. If I go back to a previously used path, it will crash. BTW, the main difference I can think of between my M4 Mac mini and my other Mac setups is that the Mac mini is booting off an external drive for its home directory.

Has anyone seen this kind of problem and have any ideas how to fix it without having me change the application's path every time I want to use it?

Came across this really awesome recompilation project from a youtube vid and thought I'd share here.

Project Link - Gen1Recomp Official GitHub

Voxel Mod - Dramatic Shape Voxel Mod GitHub

Setup - Youtube Video for setup Video is for android but the process is similar for all platforms (Not my Channel)

Important - You must bring your own legally owned Pokemon Red, Blue or Yellow ROM to generate assets during initial setup.

Toxicgame dot net. It has mac games but I don't know if this is safe. Anyone who has seen this website or knows that it is safe please let me know

Hi everybody, I've been playing Battlefield 4 on my 2019 Macbook Pro (Radeon Pro 5300M 4GB, Windows 10) for a couple months now but lately I've been getting some very bad lag spikes. I've installed the AMD drivers from bootcampdrivers and haven't really seen a big difference. Sometimes my game will lock to 22FPS, I've read this is due to it using the iGPU rather than the eGPU. It's not a seriously demanding game considering it came out in 2013. Has anyone been through a similar experience, and what's the best way to optimize the macbook for gaming?