Valve Ends SteamVR Support for Mac, Shifts Focus to Windows and Linux
Valve drops official macOS support for its SteamVR platform, leaving Mac owners to rely on legacy builds or Windows installations. The decision comes less than two years after Apple heavily promoted VR capabilities at its developer conference.
Valve officially ends support for macOS in SteamVR, leaving Mac users with only legacy builds if they want to experience PC-based virtual reality. Mac owners who still want to access the latest SteamVR features simply install Windows as a secondary operating system. This move effectively leaves Mac users without a major tethered VR platform, as Facebook's Oculus Rift abandoned Mac support years ago.
This decision marks a sharp reversal from 2017, when Apple heavily promoted macOS as a capable VR platform during its annual developer conference. At that time, Apple updated its Metal graphics API for high-performance, low-latency VR rendering and even partnered with Unity and Unreal Engine. The company showcased these capabilities with a live Star Wars mixed reality demo and later added specific support for the HTC Vive Pro.
The likely cause of this shift is the extremely small user base, as macOS accounts for less than four percent of Steam users and VR headset ownership sits at just over one percent overall. Valve now plans to focus entirely on Windows and Linux, the latter of which remains essential for enterprise and developer use cases. Meanwhile, Apple is reportedly developing its own standalone mixed reality headset, suggesting the company may abandon the tethered PC VR market entirely.