Community Forums - Unsupported Builds

Important Information These are community forums and not official technical support. If you need official support: Contact Us

CrossOver Chromium
Our OEM port of Google's Chromium web browser.

The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Back to Threads Reply to Thread

Steam on Mac

So I'm thinking about investing in this so that I can play PC games on my mac without having to go to Bootcamp.

I noticed that there is support for steam, but I was wondering if I would be able to use my Mac version of Steam or if I'd have to install the PC version as well to get the games.

Jason Brady wrote:

So I'm thinking about investing in this so that I can play PC games
on my mac without having to go to Bootcamp.

I noticed that there is support for steam, but I was wondering if I
would be able to use my Mac version of Steam or if I'd have to
install the PC version as well to get the games.

You would need to use both versions of Steam. CrossOver would let you use the Windows version with the Windows games and then of course the Mac version of steam would let you use the Mac version.

I do exactly what Caron suggests, but I go one better: I have created symbolic links from the GCFs installed under the Mac copy (/Users/<me>/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/) to the same location under Crossover (/Users/<me>/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/<steam_bottle>/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/), as well as for games that live in the common folder and in the SteamApps/<user>/ folder. For Windows-only games, of course, I install them from within the Windows version of Steam under CrossOver, and I don't bother to sym-link them over to the Mac side, because there's no point.

For games that run under Windows and Mac (I play a lot of Garry's Mod and TF2, for example), Steam seems to just "do the right thing", downloading the appropriate platform executable (e.g. hl2_osx for Mac, hl2.exe for Windows) without disturbing the other.

This saves LOADS of disk space, and means that I only have to endure a single download for each update.

Incidentally, some cross-platform games, notably Killing Floor, run way better natively on the Mac than under Crossover. Others (L4D, L4D2) seem to be about the same regardless. I end up running Garry's Mod under CrossOver more than natively because Garry didn't have all his Mac ducks in a row for a couple of recent revisions.

CrossOver Forums: the place to discuss running Windows applications on Mac and Linux

CodeWeavers or its third-party tools process personal data (e.g. browsing data or IP addresses) and use cookies or other identifiers, which are necessary for its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in our Privacy Policy. You accept the use of cookies or other identifiers by clicking the Acknowledge button.
Please Wait...
eyJjb3VudHJ5IjoiVVMiLCJsYW5nIjoiZW4iLCJjYXJ0IjowLCJ0enMiOi01LCJjZG4iOiJodHRwczpcL1wvbWVkaWEuY29kZXdlYXZlcnMuY29tXC9wdWJcL2Nyb3Nzb3Zlclwvd2Vic2l0ZSIsImNkbnRzIjoxNzA4NjEzODE4LCJjc3JmX3Rva2VuIjoiTnpGQlptdXBxM3VTcVA5QSIsImdkcHIiOjB9