Valve’s Game-Streaming Steam Link App Is Now Available on the Mac

Valve's quietly released a lightweight Steam Link app for macOS, providing gamers with a way to stream their Steam library from a PC to their Macs with Steam Link installed.

Steam Link Launches on macOS

Steam Link has been available on Apple's iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS platforms since 2019. And now, the software has officially launched on the Mac App Store.

You will need a Mac system running the macOS 10.13 software or higher to use Steam Link, in addition to another PC running Windows, Mac, or Linux and the Steam client. Both machines must be connected to the same local network for the software to work.

For the best possible network performance and responsiveness, Valve advises connecting both computers using Ethernet to your home router.

According to the app's description:

The Steam Link app allows you to play your Steam games across all your computers. Just pair an MFI or Steam controller to your Mac, connect to a computer running Steam on the same local network, and start playing your existing Steam games.

As of now, the Steam Link app is currently available on iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and Raspberry Pi.

On a related note, Valve just opened its Remote Play Together feature to the public allowing Steam users to stream local multiplayer games with friends over the internet. It comes with a cool perk, too---only one of the players needs to own the game and anyone can join in, even if you don't subscribe to Steam!

Should You Use Steam Link or Steam?

You may be wondering about the purpose of this dedicated app considering that Valve's main Steam app has been available on macOS for years now. As MacRumors points out, the dedicated Steam Link app is just 30MB in size while the Steam app is a massive download that requires 1GB of storage space to install and use.

In other words, Steam Link lets Mac owners stream games to their Mac without having to install the full Steam app. Of course, using the Steam Link client requires a powerful computer to both render and stream games to devices with the Steam Link app installed.

Steam Link is a great alternative to using the full Steam client to stream from one PC to the other. But if that doesn't work for you for one reason or another, installing the full Steam app to play games locally on your Mac is your second best option.

Gaming on the Mac?

Alternatively, you can jump through some considerable hoops and dual boot Windows on your Mac. You could also run Windows alongside macOS using virtualization. Either way, you should be able to access most of the latest titles. But as anyone who's tried that can attest, there are no guarantees some games won't crash or refuse to launch at all.

One major advantage Steam Link does offer to those who can afford a powerful secondary computer is the ability to play the best, most demanding titles on their Mac.

It's no secret that gaming on the Mac leaves a lot to be desired---blame it on a very limited selection of Mac games. Plus, the fact that macOS lacks support for Nvidia chips and doesn't run DirectX makes porting graphics-heavy titles over to macOS very challenging.