Howto install the Windows version of Steam on macOS Sonoma

We will install the x86 version Homebrew in order to be able to use Apple's modified version of Wine and to install the Windows version Steam.

We will make sure that our existing environment (and the Apple silicon version of Homebrew we need for 'serious' work) remains undisturbed.

This guide is only tested for Apple Silicon machines.

Latest tested versions

• 2024-06-11: New version of the Game Porting Toolkit 2.0 beta is available with new graphics drivers, and while the manual built process has not been fixed, it's possible to install Steam relying on old prebuilt toolkits that we will manually update with the newest graphics drivers to run Windows Steam. Installation is tested with macOS 14.5, Game Porting Toolkit 2.0 beta and GCenX's prebuilt kits.

Preparations:

• Go to Apple Games in order to download the Game Porting Toolkit. There are two possible downloads: "Evaluation environment for Windows games 2.0 beta" and "Game porting toolkit 2.0 beta". The later is larger and contains the 'Evaluation environment' too. We will need the "Evaluation environment for Windows games 2.0" only.

The "Evaluation environment for Windows games 2.0" contains a Readme that outlines the installation process, but here we will customize it, in order to run Steam.

• Download Steam. Make sure to download the Windows setup, and not the (default) Mac version. You should now have a file SteamSetup.exe.

Step-by-step installation

• The minimum macOS version is macOS Sonoma 14.5, a prebuilt game-porting-toolkit and Game Porting Toolkit 2
• This guide only applies to Apple Silicon Macs. No Intel support.
• Open a terminal (or iTerm2)
• Make sure that rosetta is installed by entering:

softwareupdate --install-rosetta

Now your Mac is able to execute x86_64 code. This is the basis for all the following installation.

• Now switch to a x86 shell by entering:

arch -x86_64 zsh 

Type arch again, to make sure that you are using Intel. It should not show arm64, but i386 ( ;-) )

Now, from a terminal that uses x86_64 arch, install homebrew for x86:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

This will install the Intel x86 version of homebrew to /usr/local. If you already installed homebrew for Apple Silicon, then that version resides in /opt/homebrew and won't be touched. This guide will assume that the Apple Silicon homebrew is your important version, and will remain the default when working with terminal or using brew. If you do not have an Apple Silicon version of homebrew installed, don't worry, nothing we do here requires that or modifies any of it.

Do not follow the recommendation at the end of the x86-homebrew install script to put shellenv into .zprofile. (That would put the x86 Version of Homebrew into your paths, conflicting with an Apple Silicon version of homebrew. No paths or environment modifications are needed in order to proceed!)

In order not to mess up the two homebrew versions, we create an alias for the Intel homebrew:

alias brew86=/usr/local/bin/brew

Note: if you are following Apple's readme, make sure to replace all instances of brew in Apple's doc with brew86 from now on.

Installation using a pre-built toolkit

Use Dean Greer's (GCenX) versions of the toolkit that have been prebuilt. This is the faster installation method (and currently the only non-broken one):

brew86 install --cask --no-quarantine gcenx/wine/game-porting-toolkit

This installs a macOS Application "Game Porting Toolkit" based on the old working binaries that opens a pre-configured terminal with all the game-porting tools. Go to macOS 'Applications' and open "Game Porting Toolkit". In the terminal window that gets started by the application, enter:

wine winecfg

to verify everything is working. Close Winecfg and start with the update procedure to the latest drivers.

Make sure that you have opened the "Evaluation environment for Windows Games". You should see a folder at /Volumes/Evaluation environment for Windows games 2.0. Then start the update:

cd /Applications/Game\ Porting\ Toolkit.app/Contents/Resources/wine/lib/external
mv D3DMetal.framework D3DMetal.framework-old; mv libd3dshared.dylib libd3dshared.dylib-old
ditto /Volumes/Evaluation\ environment\ for\ Windows\ games\ 2.0/redist/lib/external/ .

This is silent on success.

Now you are ready to install Steam (use a Terminal that is opened by the "Game Porting Toolkit" application!)

MTL_HUD_ENABLED=0 WINEESYNC=1 wine ~/Downloads/SteamSetup.exe

After some time, the Steam login appears!

Steam has been installed into the wine prefix at ~/.wine and your Toolkit software resides within the application "Game Porting Toolkit". From any Terminal, you can now start Steam directly with:

MTL_HUD_ENABLED=0 WINEESYNC=1 /Applications/Game\ Porting\ Toolkit.app/Contents/Resources/wine/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Steam/steam.exe

This takes some times, but then Steam starts.

Create a shortcut for Steam

We can use Apple's 'Shortcuts' app to automate the process of launching Wine & Steam Windows. Start the Shortcuts app, create a new shortcut and add the action 'Run Shell Script'.

The script text is:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c
MTL_HUD_ENABLED=0 WINEESYNC=1 /Applications/Game\ Porting\ Toolkit.app/Contents/Resources/wine/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Steam/steam.exe

Note: 'Shortcut' might ask you for confirmation, if you want to run scripts, and you need to enable that via the settings-link provided.

Add an icon to the shortcut, and you are ready to go. The shortcut can be put into the dock, and now you simply can directly start Steam for Windows! (Right-click the shortcut script in the 'Shortcuts' app and select 'Add to dock' to create shortcut for your shortcut in the Shortcuts app...)

Just be patient when starting Steam, it takes quite a long time!

References

• Good collection of information: Apple Gaming Wiki
• A 'batteries-included' GUI version to get the game-porting-toolkit running: Whisky
• Pre-built versions of the toolkit are available at Gcenx repository

History

• 2024-06-11: Apple releases game_porting_toolkit 2.0 beta 1, self-built is still broken, but a work-around is available using a pre-built toolkit. The self-builder instructions have been moved here (build is broken!).
• 2024-03-26: Apple's game_porting_toolit requires Command Line Tools version 15.1 to build successfully, newer versions are not (yet) supported.
• 2024-03-24: Apple's game_porting_toolkit is broken, the project currently doesn't install until the build is fixed by Apple.
• 2024-03-08: macOS 14.4 testet ok.
• 2023-11-24: Apple Game Porting Toolkit 1.1 changes. Addressed suggestions by @mobigroup and @cdtj concerning username placeholders.
• 2023-10-06: New installations with Xcode 15, Sonoma 14.0 release and game-porting-toolkit 1.0 retested, ok.
• 2023-10-06: Small fixes for release version of game-porting-toolkit 1.0, Uninstallation and troubleshooting notes.
• 2023-09-26: macOS Sonoma 14.0 Release tested ok. No changes.
• 2023-09-24: Retest with Sonoma RC, game-porting-toolkit Beta 4 (Note: library path on Apple's IMG has changed from lib to redist/lib.
• 2023-08-14: Updates for game-porting-tookit Beta 3 alias 1.0.3 and Sonoma Beta 5. (No significant changes to the update procedure).
• 2023-07-04: Section Update notes added. Apple has published a new version 1.0.2 of the game-porting toolkit.