Steam Will Soon Drop Support for macOS 11 Big Sur
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If you’re a Mac user that’s still running macOS 11 Big Sur, be aware: Valve has announced that the Steam Client will stop running on your Mac in a few weeks. The culprit? A Chromium compatibility limitation.
According to a blog post on Steam Support originally noticed by Redditor wickedplayer494, the Steam Client will stop functioning on machines running macOS 11 Big Sur as of October 15.
Valve explains:
This change is required as core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of macOS. In addition, future versions of Steam will require macOS feature and security updates only present in macOS 12 and above.
This means that if your Mac is still running macOS 11, whether its due to the need to support older unsupported software or peripherals, be warned: your Mac will not be able to run Steam, or any game or application you might have purchased and downloaded through Steam, unless you update your Mac to a later version of the Mac operating system than macOS 11 Big Sur.
Valve reminded Mac users that Apple’s last update to macOS Big Sur was back in 2023, encouraging Mac users to update their machines if possible, due to security reasons:
We strongly encourage all macOS 11 users to update sooner rather than later. Apple ended security updates and technical support for macOS 11 in 2023. Computers running these operating systems, when connected to the internet, are susceptible to new malware and other exploits which will not be patched. That malware can cause your computer, Steam and games to perform poorly or crash. That malware can also be used to steal the credentials for your Steam account or other services.
Users of macOS 11 Big Sur can check out Apple’s support knowledge base for more information about upgrading their machine’s operating system.
While Steam will soon cease to function on macOS 11 Big Sur, Valve has recently offered some good news for users of Apple Silicon-powered Macs. It recently released a beta version of its Steam for Mac client with support for Macs powered by Apple’s M-series chips. The move comes following Apple’s announcement during its June Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that it’s planning to sunset Rosetta 2, which allows Apple Silicon-based Macs to run applications developed for Intel-based Macs.
While this year’s macOS Tahoe 26 release will still offer support for a limited number of Intel-powered Macs, users will need to update to an Apple Silicon-based Mac to be able to run Apple’s latest and greatest version that will likely be released in fall 2026, according to this article on Apple’s developer website:
macOS Tahoe will be the last release for Intel-based Mac computers. Those systems will continue to receive security updates for 3 years.
Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple Silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.
The update will allow the Steam client to avoid the performance hit that Apple Silicon Mac gamers have been dealing with. The Steam app uses a Chromium browser-based interface, which will now run natively on Apple Silicon, rather than via Intel emulation.
