Valve has quietly released a Steam Client Beta that runs natively on Apple Silicon, finally ending its reliance on the Rosetta 2 translation layer.
The updated Steam client eliminates the performance overhead that plagued Mac gamers since Apple's transition to its own chips. Steam's Chromium-based interface, which could slow to a crawl on occasion, now runs directly on Apple Silicon rather than through Intel emulation.
Early testers report dramatically faster launch times and smoother navigation through the Store and Library. The difference should be immediately apparent, with basic actions like switching tabs feeling fluid rather than laggy.
Apple announced this week at WWDC that macOS Tahoe will be the last version supporting Intel Macs, with Rosetta 2 set for deprecation. Starting with macOS 28, Apple said that only a limited version of Rosetta 2 will remain available for older games that rely on Intel-based frameworks
Mac users can access the beta through Steam's settings. Navigate to Interface, select "Steam Beta Update" from the Client Beta Participation dropdown, then restart to download the roughly 230MB update.
You can verify the native version is running by checking Activity Monitor – Steam should appear with "Kind: Apple" rather than "Kind: Intel."
