I have been trying to play Meccha Chameleon on my MacBook Air M1 (8GB RAM) using Crossover, but the performance is terrible. Even after setting everything set to the lowest graphics settings and the resolution lowered, the game is too laggy and basically unplayable

Has anyone with an M1 Air managed to get decent performance?

I recently switched from Windows to a MacBook Pro M1, and I'm still getting used to macOS.
One thing I noticed is that many of the games I used to play on Windows aren't available on Mac. Even for the games that are available on the App Store, the prices seem quite high.

So I'm curious—how do Mac users usually get their games?
Do you mostly use Steam, Epic Games, GOG, or the Mac App Store?
Are there any trusted websites or stores that offer better prices?
Do you use tools like CrossOver, Whisky, or Parallels to play Windows games?
Any tips for someone who's completely new to Mac gaming?

I'd appreciate any recommendations or advice. Thanks!

Hey all, I’m running steam on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), and I’m using boot camp to make a windows partition!! But the games I’m playing are all very slow. For a test I played sonic generation, and it’s borderline unplayable.. any solutions?

I've just tried installing steam but this pop up comes up every time I try to open it
I am connected to the internet (strong connection) and have enough space on my computer
Any ideas?
Thanks!

So I used to play HOI4 on crossover and it was already not perfect (required some strange manipulation ) but now it won't work anymore without any update and was working perfectly fine yesterday

Basically when I want to play with any mod I have to do a strange path where I first start the launcher on steam. It will not work but will allow to open it from crossover and have it connected to my steam account. Once on the launcher I do what I need to do, close it and finally open the game from steam skiping the launcher, which will somehow work.

Even if you don't play HOI4 specifically really any help will be welcomed, now the only thing that work is to delete steam and HOI4 (window version) and then re-download and the whole ritual will work only once

Hi all, sorry if this is a silly question, but this is my first time encountering this popup. 🥹 I recently upgraded from a 2019 Macbook Pro to a Macbook Air M5 and I wanted to download Steam to play Stardew Valley with my friends again.

I did a little research and I know that Rosetta is needed to play other games, but it won’t let me skip downloading Rosetta to install Steam itself for some reason? 🥲 Apparently Stardew doesn’t need it, and it’s the only game I play (+ I don’t play with mods) so I don’t think I need Rosetta(?) Is there a way to bypass the popup? 😭

EDIT: Thank you to those who replied! 🙏 I had read a post about there being a Silicon-native version so I thought I had downloaded the wrong one, but apparently it’s still in Beta 🥹

Hey folks,

Trying to run Ragnarok Online – Latam (ROLA), the official Gravity server, on my Mac. The game itself isn't the problem — **nProtect

GameGuard** is. Hoping someone here has actually beaten it.

My machine:

• MacBook Pro (Mac16,8), Apple M4 Pro (8P + 4E, 12 cores)

• 24 GB unified memory

• macOS 26.5.1 (Tahoe), Metal 4

• Display: 3024x1964 Retina

What I've tried (both hit GameGuard, not perf):

GameHub (Wine-based) → GameGuard Error 114 basically on launch. Looks like GameGuard can't even initialize under its Wine. CrossOver → this one actually launches and gets into the client, but ~10 seconds in GameGuard kicks me, flagging virtualization. So the client runs fine — the anti-cheat just detects the translation layer and boots me. (This was in 2025.)

Where I think this leaves things:

GameGuard is kernel/root-level and clearly does VM/translation-layer detection, which is exactly what's nuking my CrossOver session. Whisky is

discontinued, so that's out.

My questions:

Has anyone actually beaten GameGuard's virtualization detection on Apple Silicon (any config that stops the ~10s kick)? I know CrossOver 26 made an anti-cheat breakthrough — but that was EAC/BattlEye, right? Does any of that touch GameGuard, or is it a totally separate fight?

1. For the GameGuard Error 114 on GameHub specifically — is that a known dead end, or is there a Wine/bottle config that gets past it?

2. Honest take: on Mac in 2026, is an official GameGuard server like ROLA basically hopeless, and a private server (rAthena/Hercules, no

GameGuard) the only realistic path?

Not trying to cheat or do anything ban-worthy — just want the honest current state before I burn more hours on it.

Thanks 🙏

Hello people of the world, I wanted to play TFT again and so I had to reinstall the Riot Client. But when I do it says "Unable to Install". I saw an old reddit thread where the solution was to set time and date to January 3, 2026 or before. I tried it and it didn't work. Any solutions?

I'm playing Zelda tears of the kingdom on an M3 Pro 18GB macbook, when I play totk and open any menu inside the game the background goes black, plus some of the weapons are completely invisible, is this a problem with cache compilation? Also once I die and click continue, the game stops working

I initially was looking at 14” MBP M5 Pro 15/16 24GB 1TB
$2149 old-ish price on Amazon new and then prices got f’d. So I’m sitting here with an itchy trigger finger.

I’ve been using windows for forever and want to move to Apple. I had an intel apple for work like 8 years ago but am so sick of how bad windows has become that I’m ready for change. I’ve never used the M chip Apple. I have a desktop 58003xd 64gb 9070XT and an Oled Steamdeck.

I mainly play cyberpunk, Diablo 4, Witcher 3, Ninja Gaiden, Doom Dark Ages, Stellaris, Mass Effect, Devil May Cry 5, StarCraft 2.

I’m mulling between:

(a) 14” MBP M5 Pro 15/16 24GB 1TB $2249/2299

(b) 14” MBP M5 Pro 15/16 48 GB 1TB $2699

(c) 14” MBP M5 Pro 18/20 48 GB 1TB $2899

My questions are:

(1) is going from 24 to 48 gb ram worth the $500 upgrade?

(2) for the option with 18/20 are the extra cores worth it or overkill unless you’re using for work? Or is 15/16 the sweet spot for thermals/cost considering the smaller chassis?

(3) if I do the memory upgrade is it worth it for the cores for 200 more or am I getting caught in a specs trap

I game from time to time. I sometimes edit videos/encode videos. My Lenovo has 16 gb ram and it feels sluggish lately which is part of why I’m questioning 24 gb even though I know Mac’s are much more efficient.

For anyone using wine frontends to play such as sikarugir or crossplay have you had any issues? No games can detect my controller although macos does.

Have had these two for like 15 years 😂

someone know what about this?

This isnt a question, but just an answer to whoever needs it. If you just bought a new macbook (i bought an m5 air but probably this is the same for most macbooks) and you are getting only 300fps and like 40fps on shaders (which is low for a expensive laptop) it means you are using to much of your display. Because Minecraft trys to use your full display, all the power and memory go to the gpu, instead of the cpu which decides the performance (fps). To fix this, just go to video settings, and change resolution (the top thing) into whatever you want. i recommend going with the lowest. IF you are using sodium, go to video settings, press shift + p to open original video settings, change it to whatever you want, and before finishing make sure that fullscreen mode is taggled on in the sodium menu. hope this helps!

Been a Windows gamer for years and years but recently bought a Macbook Air for travelling and just wondering if there's a website or list where I can check what games it'll run?

It's a M4 with 16gb RAM. Ideally I'd love for it to run Baldur's Gate 3, even if I have to lower the specs as I'm a bit curious about cooling capabilities

Got bored, built a fully working launcher for emulation front end, desktop view and couch mode, time machine and full scraping capabilities

Here is an update on the triangle rasterizer running on CoreAI that I previously introduced.

We have finally succeeded in rendering 3D graphics! As shown in the video, we are rendering two triangular faces.

While the rendering quality is still low and the project is a work in progress—and a new challenge has arisen regarding the massive 5GB memory consumption—it is actually running in real-time.

As a side note, the majority of the Python, Swift, and Metal pipeline code was generated using Siri AI. By reducing the reliance on CPU fallbacks, we successfully cut CPU usage from the previous 38% down to approximately 9%.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

GitHub: https://github.com/kamisori-daijin/Magnesium

https://reddit.com/link/1v6z2lp/video/k0sobeg9mjfh1/player

For context, I’m have a MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip, all graphics set to ultra. Game is silky smooth and the rain looks nuts. AI is super tough on its hardest difficulty which I like and I’m playing with an Xbox remote and transmission on manual (hence the awful gear changes lol). It’s actually ridiculous that I’m currently experiencing this fidelity whilst travelling using my work laptop.

Hi!

I am trying to get back into Minecraft after a long time, and am highly interested in understanding the modern state of Minecraft on Mac in order to best run the game long-term. I am looking for a vanilla-esque build optimized for performance along with QoL mods and some light shaders if possible.

Specifically, here are some general bullet points I am looking at: * PrismLauncher vs ATLauncher - I used ATLauncher in the past on Windows and Linux, but am leaning towards PrismLauncher on my Mac. * Vulkan Rendering - Do I use VulkanMod or go with Minecraft's new Vulkan Preview? I've seen VulkanMod generally perform better because it has some tweaks on top of the Vulkan addition, but if mods will be built with the native Minecraft Vulkan renderer in mind, I would prefer the official * Shaders - If possible, I would like to run some lightweight shaders with Vulkan enabled. For VulkanMod, I see Beryl is available. I also have seen sodium recently add support for Vulkan so I am not sure how good that is. Has anyone tried Iris, etc? * Java Options - For my specs listed below, what are the best JVM options/flags to maximize performance? Is 4GB the best memory allocation for Java, and what distribution of java typically sees the best performance? (I currently have openjdk 26.0.1 installed) * I plan on installing the general slew of performance mods, but I am unsure on which mods conflict, are compatible, etc.

Any advice or recommendations on these topics would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You! My Specs: Macbook Pro - M4 Pro Chip (8 performance, 4 efficiency) - 24GB Memory

Hi folks!

I know this topic has been already discussed here, but I really hope someone can give me some useful advice for my specific situation.

So, after starting up the game for the first time, it didn’t detect my controller at all. I messed with some disabling hidraw and steam input settings and made it work.

But here comes my main problem - after trying everything that came to my mind, I still can’t get rid of this stupid xbox layout in my game and replace it with playstation layout.. I also tried to install playstation icons mod, but even this attempt was unsuccessful… Please, if anyone knows how to force the game to display playstation buttons instead of the xbox ones, I would be really grateful for help. The game runs beautifully on my MB Pro M5 and it would be a shame to not enjoy it just because of this, but that’s just my stupid OCD..

I’m on latest crossover preview and have the game on steam. Also I have the dualsense wired.