Mac gaming has never been more popular. Most of the recent Mac gaming hype is thanks to the Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition, which is now available on almost every MacBook with Apple Silicon. Other recent additions to the macOS game library like Assassin's Creed Shadows have also helped hype up the niche gaming category, making macOS gaming better now than it's been since the old Macintosh days.

If you're interested in joining the macOS gaming community thanks to the recent additions, there are a few things you should know before you start thinking you can ditch your gaming PC for a MacBook. As a gamer who has owned a Mac for the last two decades, I'm familiar with the trials and tribulations of gaming on Apple platforms. And while it's definitely gotten better, you'll want to keep these five things in mind as you set up your Mac for gaming.

5 The game library is small

Apple has worked to get more games on macOS, but it's still a small slice of the industry.

Apple has slowly started filling out its game library with some of the biggest titles, but many of these games are only launching on Mac after a significant delay from the PC and game console launches. Cyberpunk 2077 is five years old at this point. Resident Evil Village arrived on macOS about a year and a half after the initial release date.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is the one major title that launched on macOS at the same time as the Windows and console versions of the game. Assassin's Creed Mirage was playable on iOS and could be mirrored on your Mac, but was not native to macOS.

While the Mac-native game library is getting bigger by the day, it's still not a massive ecosystem as most games just aren't coded for Mac or optimized for Metal.

4 Streaming is your friend

GeForce Now is expensive, but worth it.

Because the macOS game library is on the small side, most of your favorite games just won't be available. Of my most played games, only Baldur's Gate III and Final Fantasy XIV are playable on macOS. I need to stream my other go-to games like Genshin Impact or Monster Hunter Wilds.

There are plenty of game streaming services, including Nvidia's GeForce Now, which is one way to get access to additional games on your Mac. You can also stream from your gaming desktop through Steam if you're on the same network, which is another streaming option.

While this does mean you aren't actually gaming with your Apple hardware, it's a solid option for filling out the holes in the macOS game library.

3 Don't bother with Parallels

Dual-boot workarounds just aren't the same with Apple Silicon.

Because Apple Silicon uses Arm-based architecture, even trying to run Windows through Parallels or via a dual-boot hard drive isn't going to get you much better gaming. While it can get you access to some additional Windows applications, Windows on Arm gaming isn't in a much better place than macOS due to the limitations of the Arm-style SoC.

While dual-booting Windows used to be the perfect workaround for accessing games on Macs, it's not the perfect solution that it used to be. So rather than partition your hard drive and dual-boot a worse operating system, you're better off opting for a streaming service or just sticking to Mac-native game titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider or Borderlands 3.

2 Macs aren't designed for gaming performance

Even the M4 Max isn't built for gaming.

I don't have an M4 Max MacBook sitting in front of me, and based on early reports, the M4 Max silicon can get frame rates of up to 120 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077. But the M4 Max's massive GPU is intended for design work, photo editing, video editing, and 3D rendering tasks. So it won't ever be able to game at the same speed as a dedicated gaming GPU, and it will start to suffer more once your crank up the graphic fidelity.

You're mostly going to be getting speeds of 30–60 FPS on most modern games, though lowering your graphics presets and your resolutions can help you get to speeds over 100 FPS. Some Mac games are also just better optimized, like Baldur's Gate III. So if you just want an ultraportable laptop or a small, efficient miniPC that is capable of some light gaming, you'll be fine. If you want speeds that compete with the best gaming rigs out there, then you're better off grabbing a dedicated Windows gaming laptop or desktop instead.

1 Mac gaming is still in its infancy

Despite the number of years, it's still early days of development.

Apple has only started heavily investing in gaming in the last few years. The company is essentially playing a multi-decade game of catch-up right now, so Windows gaming and even Linux gaming are in better shape. Apple essentially wrote off gaming in the late 1990s, allowing the Mac gaming ecosystem to atrophy in the meantime. While dedicated Apple fans still found ways to game, and some of the biggest game titles still opted to go for macOS ports, gaming on a Mac was basically like trying to pilot a ghostship for two decades.

That is changing as Apple is working more closely with game developers to bring more high-profile game titles to Mac devices, which is never a bad thing.

Qualcomm's investment in the Windows on Arm gaming space may also help out Mac users, as both Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform and Apple's M Silicon are based on Arm architecture. Though Snapdragon will have the benefit of both the Microsoft DirectX and Vulkan APIs, while Apple Silicon is still restricted to Metal.

If you're thinking about gaming on a Mac, you may as well give it a try.

If you have a mac handy and you just want to take a dip in the mac gaming space, the timing has never been better. But it will also be improving over time, so Mac gaming in 2025 will probably be worse than Mac gaming in 2026. It's certainly better than it was last year, by any rate. So if you do try to game on your Mac, and you hate the experience, you probably shouldn't write it off forever.