Apple’s New Game Overlay in macOS 26 Could be So Much More

Gaming on Mac has come a long way, but if people are going to take it seriously—like, really seriously—Apple still has some work to do. The new public beta for macOS 26 and its gaming updates won’t convince the naysayers, but I see it as the tipping point, and all Apple needs to do is relax for once and let the players take control.

For macOS 26, Apple added a new Game Overlay and Games app. The former acts as an easy way to adjust brightness, volume, or call friends while in-game. It also has a system for achievements and leaderboards. The latter is a simple launcher for all your games while acting as a way for Apple to take an inch of real estate from Steam’s dominance as a games marketplace.

Game Overlay could be a strong start if it weren’t so barebones. All you need to do is compare the Steam Overlay to Apple’s own. Steam offers game recording, access to voice settings, playtime metrics, clocks, guides, and—most importantly—a way to enable performance monitoring. PC gamers need their FPS counter to know if they’re getting a good experience. Macs have a Metal performance monitor, but it’s buried under a command you have to input into Terminal (type: -g MetalForceHudEnabled -bool yes). Apple has indicated that the two features are going to remain separate. The only way you can get any performance-related metrics is with the Metal Performance HUD. It’s a pain to turn off and on, and if you forget to turn it off, you’ll see the FPS counter show up in apps where you don’t even need it.

But Apple seems to know what players want; it just doesn’t show it. The Mac maker secretly updated the Metal monitor. Now it provides data on MetalFX upscaling. This software feature takes a game running at a lower resolution and boosts it to a higher resolution, all while maintaining that better performance. Apple will show what resolution you’re upscaling from based on current settings. If Apple wanted to add even more details, it could copy Steam’s recent update that lets you see FPS before or after frame generation, which is software that inserts generated frames between rendered frames, increasing performance.

But Apple doesn’t necessarily want the average Joe to know about their FPS. It feels as though it would rather restrict players to a max of 30 or 60 fps to provide a console-like experience. Macs cannot be like a PlayStation 5 or Xbox. There are too many varieties of Mac, both in the product specs and the type of chip. On PC, players have access to a massive number of different components, from various CPUs and GPUs to motherboards, RAM, and beyond. Game developers need to work extra hard to ensure their games’ compatibility. Apple relies on its own hardware, most importantly its M-series processors, to maintain a cohesive ecosystem. Even then, Apple has five years’ worth of silicon under its belt, going all the way back to the M1.

Apple has indicated through games like Resident Evil 4 that it wants some of these titles to run well on iPad and iPhone as well as Mac. However, the expectations are different for personal computers. People have far more choices on Mac than on constrained tablets or smartphones. Apple needs people to know it’s taking gaming seriously, which is why it made such a big deal of porting CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 to Mac. The game runs surprisingly well on a thin, fanless MacBook Air M4, but only after you adjust settings to turn off VSync. I had to rely on Apple’s performance monitor to make sure I was getting smooth gameplay, just like I do on PC.

To create any foothold in gaming, Apple needs to relax its white-knuckled grip over its ecosystem. The latest Macs are gaming-capable with chips that support enough graphics capabilities to run some demanding games. Apple’s already promoted special gaming keyboards and mice, but that’s not enough. Apple needs to take a chill pill, relax, and understand that players are sophisticated enough to change their own graphics settings and find a balance of frame rate and graphics for themselves.