How to Fix Steam Not Running on Mac. For quite some time now, Steam has been recognized as one of the most popular digital game platforms for years, but all the software runs into issues with time. Users are certain to encounter bugs and glitches seeing as the platform was created about 20 years ago. Yeah, Steam came around 20 years ago.
How to Fix Steam Not Running on Mac
All Mac owners are probably already used to the software issue when it comes to programs that was mainly designed to run on PC hardware, and of course, steam is not excepted. Maybe the latest version is in possession of a Mac-specific issue and it’s giving you a headache.
Alternatively, the issue you are facing is that your MacOS could be out of date and that’s causing problems that could be that MacOS is out of date and causing issues with Valve’s launcher. On the flip side, it might just be that your operating system does not support steam anymore. There are several reasons why steam may not run well on your Mac, most of which is quite easy to talk about, but what can you do when there seems to be no explanation to the problem.
Things to Try
If your steam I freezing or lagging on startup – whether it’s simply trying to load or installing an update what you need to do first is to try and restart it. You might be required to force quiet first if steam is not responding by pressing Command + Options + Esc, which would pull up the “Force Quite Applications” window. From there, choose steam, click “Force quit,” then click on “Force Quit” again to confirm.
Relaunching steam might not make a difference, however, in which case the next step is for you to try reinstalling the program entirely. First, you have to make sure that steam is not open, then head to Finder > Application and drag the Steam app icon straight into the trash then empty the trash. After that, download and install the latest version of steam, then start it up.
If after that your steam still refuses to run, there is one more option, it is to do the above steps but also restart your Mac during the process. Specifically, you would be required to do so after steam has been forced to quit or after it has been removed but it has been reinstalled – though you also get to try a restart after reinstallation. Finally, if steam is not working, there’s one last approach that might hopefully do the trick for you.
One More Option
If you have exhausted all these methods, you should try out reinstallation. However, this time around you would be doing far more than just deleting and reinstalling the app. Well, note that is option might not work for all MacOS versions.
You would still want to go through Finder > Applications and toss the steam app icon in the trash, of course. Right after that, open Machintosh HD and then head to Library > Application Support > Steam and delete everything in that folder except the “Steamapps” Folder. Absolutely everything else goes into the trash, but be sure “Steamapps” Stay exactly where it is. Then empty the Trash. Restarting your Mac at this point should not be necessary, but if you want to do it as a precaution, it would not hurt anything.
Seeing as the file removal is complete, you can download and reinstall steam just like you do normally Start steam up as expected and this time, if all the necessary application support files were pitched, also you should be able to log into your account, access your games library, check your download history, and all the other stuff you could do using your steam when it was working before.
