Best Game Streaming Apps for Mac

The short answer. Moonlight is the client and Sunshine is the host, and together they are the open-source answer to streaming a game from a PC to a Mac. Steam Link does the same job inside Steam, which means it works only for games Steam already knows about. ConsoleMini is the odd one out: it wraps local emulators and presents them as a console, so it is streaming in the sense of a living-room interface rather than in the sense of a network protocol. The dividing question is where the game is running, because a client without a host is a blank window, and a host without a client is a service nobody is watching.

This guide covers 4 game streaming apps for macOS. Every fact below is drawn from the same verified records that back each app’s own page. The recommendations are our editorial judgment, not payment.

Quick comparison

What actually decides this

• Which side of the stream you are installing. A client receives; a host sends. Moonlight and Steam Link are clients, Sunshine is a host. Installing the wrong side is the single most common failure in this category and it produces no error message, only a black screen.
• What the host machine has to be. Sunshine runs on the machine with the GPU; Moonlight runs on the Mac. Steam Link needs Steam running on the host. The requirement is not about the Mac at all, which is why the Mac-side feature list is short.
• Whether the game is in Steam. Steam Link streams a Steam library and nothing else. A game bought elsewhere needs the general host-and-client pair. This is a store question disguised as a networking question.
• What the network has to be. Wired on at least one side, and preferably both. Every one of these tools will work over Wi-Fi and every one of them will produce artefacts that look like a codec problem and are actually a retransmission problem.
• Whether a local console is the actual goal. A launcher that turns a Mac into a console is solving a different problem from a streamer: no second machine, no network, but also no access to games that need a PC. The two are often compared and never interchangeable.
• What has to be installed on the Mac itself. The Mac side is deliberately thin in every one of these tools, because the work happens elsewhere. That is good news for setup and bad news for troubleshooting: when the picture is wrong, the Mac is rarely the machine to inspect.
• Whether the session has to survive a sleep. A stream dies when either machine sleeps, and the Mac is the one most likely to do it mid-session. A client that reconnects cleanly is worth more than one that negotiates a higher bitrate and then drops the connection.

Our picks

• Sunshine — Its record describes a self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight, which is the host side of the pair. Choose it when you need a host on the machine that owns the GPU.
• Moonlight — Its record describes a GameStream client for PCs, which is the client side of the pair. Choose it when you have a host and need the Mac to receive it.
• Steam Link — Its record describes playing Steam games across computers, which is the Steam-only case. Choose it when the games are in Steam and the host already runs it.
• ConsoleMini — Its record describes a controller-first launcher that turns a Mac mini into a console, which is the local-console case. Choose it when the Mac itself is going to be the console.

The apps

ConsoleMini

ConsoleMini is a game launcher for macOS. Controller-first big-picture launcher that turns a Mac mini into a PS1-PS4 + retro console (wraps DuckStation, PCSX2, RPCS3, shadPS4, PPSSPP, RetroArch, mGBA, Flycast). It is released under MIT.

What it does. Turn a Mac mini into a living-room retro/PS console - beautiful big-picture launcher (Electron + React).

ConsoleMini is listed with current version 0.1.3.

Full profile and verified facts for ConsoleMini →

Moonlight

Moonlight is a networking tool for macOS. GameStream client for PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux, and Steam Link). It is released under GPL-3.0.

What it does. Hardware accelerated video decoding on Windows, Mac, and Linux. H.264, HEVC, and AV1 codec support (AV1 requires Sunshine and a supported host GPU). YUV 4:4:4 support (Sunshine only). HDR streaming support.

Moonlight is listed with current version 6.1.0.

Full profile and verified facts for Moonlight →

Steam Link

Steam Link is a networking tool for macOS. The Steam Link app allows you to play your Steam games across all your computers. It is free.

Full profile and verified facts for Steam Link →

Sunshine

Sunshine is a networking tool for macOS. Self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight. It is released under GPL-3.0.

What it does. Self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight.

Sunshine is listed with current version 2026.914.233613.

Full profile and verified facts for Sunshine →

How to choose

• Free of charge. Steam Link — no payment is required.
• No licence fee, source available. ConsoleMini, Moonlight and Sunshine — the source can be read and, under the terms of each licence, reused.

Open source: ConsoleMini, Moonlight and Sunshine (3 of 4).

Common mistakes

• Installing a client and expecting it to find a host that was never installed.
• Streaming over Wi-Fi and blaming the codec. The artefacts are usually packet loss.
• Buying a host for a game that is not in the store the client supports.
• Testing with a menu screen. Latency shows up in a fight, not in a title sequence.
• Leaving the Mac set to sleep during a session. The stream ends at the sleep timer, not at the end of the game.

How this guide was put together

Each app’s facts come from its own record: the developer’s own pages and repository, the App Store listing where one exists, and the documentation, each with a source grade and an access date. Where a fact rests on the developer’s own statement rather than on something we verified independently, the sentence says so. Where our data has no value for something, the guide says “not published” instead of guessing.

A price appears here only where the record carries one from a stated source; the guide never estimates one, and it records the pricing model alongside so the two can be read together. Prices change and vary by region, so each app links to its own page for the current detail.

The facts and the recommendations are kept apart on purpose. Everything in the app entries, the comparison table and the answers above is composed from the records. The short answer, the criteria and the picks are our editorial judgment: they reflect what we would choose and why, and they are not paid for. Where we make a recommendation we name the condition it applies under, because we do not call anything “the best” without explaining the criteria.