An in-development project called FX Steam Launcher lets Apple-silicon/">Apple Silicon Mac users run SteamOS in a virtual machine from the macOS desktop. The preview is available through GitHub, and users can switch back to macOS at any time. SteamOS can run in a window or full-screen, in a setup described as similar to DroidDeck, which runs SteamOS on Android devices.
In tests reported by Videocardz and conducted by content creator ETA Prime, a MacBook Pro with an Apple M4 Max, 36 GB of unified memory, a 14-core CPU and a 32-core GPU ran Left 4 Dead at more than 200 FPS. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt reached around 70 FPS, as did Stellar Blade, although the latter was tested at 800p with graphics settings on High.
The early results come with notable limitations. The Witcher 3 displayed trees incorrectly, and several games stuttered while shaders were being compiled. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Ghost of Tsushima did not run. Doom Eternal launched but failed to work because it detected an unsupported graphics card.
FX Steam Launcher was still in development, with version 1.9.8 dated November 2, 2026. The project supports SteamOS Gaming Mode, KDE Plasma Desktop Mode, audio, GPU acceleration, CPU and memory allocation settings, and MetalHUD monitoring. It also supports controllers including Xbox, Steam Controller and DualSense models. The software translates DirectX 9, 10, 11 and 12 games to ARM64, but currently cannot handle DirectX 12 titles that require feature level 12_1 or Shader Model 6.6.
Sources: Vandal.