City-building sims have been around almost as long as the Mac, and for most of that time, the genre was synonymous with SimCity. Over time, however, the quality of the franchise declined until the disastrous release of the rebooted SimCity.
Developer Colossal Order saw the opportunity and surprised the world with the release of Cities: Skylines. Providing stellar support ever since, including several DLCs and community-created content, Cities: Skylines is one of the finest simulation games for Mac and the new champion of the city-building genre.
But what does it take to run the greatest city-building simulation on macOS? How well can your Mac run Skylines? Can it run on M1 Macs?
Can you play Cities: Skylines on Mac?
You can absolutely play Cities: Skylines on your Mac, and that includes Intel and Apple Silicon Models. Even if the official system requirements don’t mention M1 or M2 Macs, our benchmarks confirm the game runs fine on Apple Silicon Macs.
It is worth mentioning that the game never received Apple Silicon native support, and according to an email from developer Colossal Order to Redditor JKJay2005, an M1 version will probably never happen:
Thank you for your email! I’m afraid there are no plans at this time to optimize the game for new hardware like the M1 or M2 chips used by newer MacBooks.
| Art | Game | Genre | 64-bit? | 64-bit | API | M1 Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Cities: Skylines | Simulation | Yes |  | OpenGL | Rosetta |
Cities: Skylines on Mac: Everything you need to know
If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, in short, you play the mayor of a town with responsibility for all aspects of your city. This includes zoning, taxes, infrastructure, emergency services, entertainment, and more. It’s a non-stop balancing act, but when you succeed in creating a thriving city in your image, it can be surprisingly rewarding.
Since day 1, Skylines has been an outstanding game with the right balance between complexity and accessibility. This game is exactly what the new SimCity was supposed to be. We were disappointed to see SimCity fumble as it did, but luckily Skylines appeared just in time to save the day. The developers have been continuously updating the base game, there has been a steady stream of official DLC, and the thriving user base includes plenty of content creators, everything from scenarios, to cities, to individual cars and buildings you can add to your creations.
And this love shows up in the reviews. The game has an 85/100 Metascore, which is pretty fantastic, and 91% positive reviews on Steam from almost 42,000 users. The Escapist said it well:
The finest city builder in over a decade, Cities: Skylines’s few flaws are so minor I only noticed them after hours of enjoyment.
All in all, if you’re remotely interested in simulation games, and more particularly, city-builders, Cities: Skylines is the best there is. It not only surpasses the latest SimCity, but it is also, hands down, a great simulation game.
Cities: Skylines Mac requirements
These are the game’s official Mac requirements:
| Requirements | |
| OS: | 10.11 |
| Processor: | 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo |
| Memory: | 8 GB RAM |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 or ATI Radeon HD 5670 ( Intel Integrated graphics are not supported) |
| Hard Drive: | 4 GB |
| A 64-Bit OS and processor are required | |
How to play Cities: Skylines on Mac
As mentioned before, Cities: Skylines runs natively on macOS, and that includes Intel-based Macs and M1/M2 Macs.
The game does require Rosetta 2 to run on Apple Silicon Macs. But Rosetta 2 works so seamlessly (it installs automatically the first time it detects an Intel-based app), and it integrates so well with macOS that the experience is virtually the same as running a native Apple Silicon Mac.
Running Cities: Skylines on an M1 Mac
This means Cities: Skylines can run on macOS without requiring any third-party software. Therefore, we won’t waste your time talking about Parallels, Crossover (both excellent tools, but only useful for Windows-exclusive games…), or Streaming services.
Can my Mac run Cities: Skylines? Benchmarks
These are the Cities: Skylines M1 benchmarks we have gathered so far (you can find more details about the game’s Apple Silicon version here):
| Game | Machine | Resolution | Settings | Other | FPS | Tester | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14", 16 GB | 1920x1200 | High | 32.4 | Mac Gamer HQ | ||
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 MacBook Pro 13", 8-core GPU, 8 GB | 1920x1080 | Medium | 30-45 | MrMacRight | ||
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 MacBook Pro 13", 8-core GPU, 8 GB | 1920x1080 | Low | 30-45 | MrMacRight | ||
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 MacBook Pro 13", 8-core GPU, 8 GB | 1920x1080 | High | 25-35 | MrMacRight | ||
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 MacBook Air 13", 7-core GPU, 8 GB | 1440x900 | Very High | 14.5 | Mac Gamer HQ | ||
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 MacBook Air 13", 7-core GPU, 8 GB | 1440x900 | Medium | 26.7 | Mac Gamer HQ | ||
| Cities: Skylines | 💻 M1 MacBook Air 13", 7-core GPU, 8 GB | 1280x800 | Medium | 24.7 | Mac Gamer HQ |
As a reminder, this is how we describe the different levels of performance:
- Below 20 FPS: Unplayable: Laggy gameplay, full of stutters and slowdowns.
- 20-30 FPS: Borderline: Can be OK in slow-paced games. Still, not optimal.
- 30-45 FPS: Playable: Acceptable for most (most gaming consoles do this).
- 45-60 FPS: Smooth: Fluid gameplay, with no perceivable stutters.
- 60+ FPS: Very Smooth: For hardcore and professional players, a luxury for most.
Into Simulation games? These are our favorites:
| Game | ★ Our Pick | Also Great | Best Value |
| Cities: Skylines |  Farming Simulator 2022 |  Euro Truck Simulator 2 |
|
| Genre | City-builder | Farming-sim | Truck-sim |
| Release date | 2015 | 2021 | 2012 |
| Metascore | |||
| Our rating | ★★★★★ Full Review | ★★★★☆ Full Review | ★★★★★ Full Review |
| Requirements | High | Medium | Low |
| Check Price |
Intel Mac benchmarks
We previously tested the game on these Intel Macs:
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Touch, Late 2017): 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5, 16 GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 650 (1.5GB)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016): 2.0 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 540 (1.5GB)
- iMac (5K, 27-inch, Late 2014): 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M290X (2GB)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012): 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000 (0.5GB)
You might have expected that as a seemingly casual game, Cities: Skylines wouldn’t put much strain on our systems. But remember, this is a simulation, and it’s constantly simulating the behavior of all the citizens, even if you’re not looking at them up close. In this case, the actions of 70,000 citizens…
For the record, we benchmarked Cities: Skylines using the settings below, our in-house FPS counter Count It, and a user-created city with 70,000 citizens for a fixed duration of 5 minutes:
Can you play Cities: Skylines on a MacBook Pro?
Cities: Skylines is a great city-building simulator, but that quality comes at a cost in terms of performance. If you meet the system requirements, you should be able to run the game at a decent performance (above 30 frames per second). But if you don’t, we recommend staying away from this one.
And this applies to Apple Silicon Macs too. Technically, an M1 Mac can run this game properly, including the most basic 2022 M1 MacBook Air, but we expected performance to be much better. Seeing how games such as Resident Evil Village can run on Mac, we expected more from Skylines… To be fair, the argument could be made that Skylines was never optimized to run on Apple Silicon, but many Intel-based games run just wonderfully on M1 Macs thanks to Rosetta 2. Clearly more could be done to improve performance on modern Macs, but it appears we will never know.
Download Cities: Skylines for Mac
You can download Cities: Skylines on Steam.
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i have a mac mini 2014 with i5 processor , 8 gb Ram, and intel iris 1536, and it runs fine with resolution high and graphics low, and all the other things off. i have read that the filters are very demanding so i set them to disabled
the only worry i have is that the fans of my mac make a lot of noice and that it gets a little bit warm.
Thanks for sharing your gameplay experience. It can always be useful to other readers with that same machine. I wouldn’t worry about noise and heat, though. Macs have safety systems that prevent it from ruining the computer because of heat. If it ever gets so hot it’s dangerous for the machine, it will automatically turn off.
Cities: Skylines is available from the developer for only $10.
For those who found this excellent article and are hoping their MacBook Air will play this game: the answer is yes, it will. Other websites around the web report that the game may not run or that integrated graphics won’t work, but the game runs just fine and I have seen no visual glitches or crashes. Make sure your Mac is plugged in so that it doesn’t slow down for the purpose of saving energy, set the in-game detail settings to low or lowish-medium, and turn off weather and day/night cycles. The game otherwise plays well enough (10FPS) even with very large cities (population 100,000) and a few hundred mods & assets. Read up on Steam Workshop for a list of “FPS-killers” (mods) to avoid and use the built in Content Manager to avoid high-poly custom assets. For a slow-motion simulator game like this 10FPS is totally playable and enjoyable; the game is still fun and even though the cities don’t look as beautiful as the ones you see on YouTube, there is still a lot of fun to be had with detailing, modding, and gameplay. [ Early 2011 MacBook Air, i7, 8GB RAM ]
Hey guys. I am new to the city simulation genre and I wish to buy the Cities: Skylines game for my MacBook Air 2017 model (1.8 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, and Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536 MB). Does anyone with the same MBA specs have issues with glitch and crashes? Thanks in advance. 🙂
Mr. Marx,
Why does it take up to 45 minutes to load a saved game on Cities – I am on a Mac with OS system
I have the game on my xbox through game pass, is there any way to get the game downloaded for free on my mac other than playing it through xcloud.
Nop, I’m afraid each platform is completely independent. But if you want to play it on Mac, you’ll need to buy it again on Steam or some other digital store (I know, it sucks…)