Pear

Pear is a free, open-source Mac application aimed at running Windows Steam games on Apple Silicon. Rather than promising universal compatibility, it frames itself as an ongoing experiment, with the long-term goal of a Rosetta-free way to play. The project publishes its progress openly through a blog and documentation.

The workflow is deliberately simple. You install Pear, let it prepare a Windows Steam environment, sign in through the official Steam client, then install and play games you already own. Setup is handled by the app, so the main steps are signing in and picking a title from your library.

What sets Pear apart is its emphasis on evidence. The site hosts game reports that record which configurations were tried, on which Mac, and what happened. The current 0.1.1 release uses Wine, DXMT and Apple’s Rosetta, and Megabonk is the first validation game, with play, input, audio and saved progress after relaunch checked on one M4 Pro.

Pear is best for technically curious Mac users and Steam owners who are comfortable with an early-stage project and want to see exactly what has been verified before trying a game. Those expecting a finished, broadly compatible launcher should treat it as a work in progress.

A practical approach is to start with the game reports, match a tested configuration to your hardware, and keep expectations aligned with the documented limitations. Pear is less a finished product than an open, documented effort to bring Windows games to Apple Silicon