Enthusiasts have been able to install macOS Sequoia on a Steam Deck, but the lack of AMD Van Gogh GPU support prevents them from running games and graphics applications. Steam Deck can run macOS, but it requires drivers to run games, TechSpot writes.
Image source: Techspot.com, Whatdahopper/X
The portable Steam Deck console, known for its open architecture and the ability to run various operating systems, has become the subject of a new experiment. A group of users were able to successfully run the latest version of Apple’s macOS Sequoia operating system on the device.
One of the participants posted a video on social network X demonstrating how to load macOS Sequoia on Steam Deck. “It was more complicated than just installing Windows,” notes whatdahopper, admitting that implementing the idea was not a trivial task, and the main obstacle to fully using macOS on the Steam Deck is the lack of support for GPU acceleration. At the same time, the AMD Van Gogh processor that underlies the console does not yet have the necessary drivers to work with the macOS graphics core. That is, games and other applications that require active use of graphic resources will not work.
Nevertheless, project participants are optimistic. They believe that existing Apple RDNA 2 driver support in macOS could theoretically be adapted to work with Van Gogh chips once the corresponding kernel extensions are released. If this happens, the Steam Deck could turn into a full-fledged portable Mac – a kind of “Deckintosh”, as it has already been dubbed online.