Steam on Mac has received native Apple Silicon support through a beta client.
Valve has released a Steam client that will run the gaming platform on the Silicon chip, thus foregoing the need to have a Rosetta 2 layer. Mac users can be free from the performance hit of having to run Rosetta 2 and Chromium. There have been complaints of slowdown on this interface, but now Steam can run natively instead of going through Intel emulation. Early testers claimed that the app runs much faster and offers smoother navigation in the Library and Store. Furthermore, switching tabs is now more fluid.
Apple said Rosetta 2 will be in a limited form and only available for older titles that require Intel frameworks when macOS 26 debuts. The beta client can be accessed via the app’s Settings, then Interface, and finally the ‘Steam Beta Update’ option. The Activity Monitor should show ‘Apple’ instead of ‘Intel’ in the Kind section.
