Subnautica on Mac: How to Play & M1 Benchmarks

Subnautica is one of the most slept-on adventure/survival games out there. With engaging gameplay, a great story, and a surreal atmosphere, Subnautica is one of those games I can recommend in a heartbeat.

Putting aside the fact that diving is my favorite activity ever, Subnautica is among the most interesting adventure games on Mac. But what does it take to run this notoriously demanding game on macOS? How well can your Mac run Subnautica? Can it run on M1 Macs?

Can you play Subnautica on Mac?

You can absolutely play Subnautica on your Mac, including 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 noting that for a game that uses Apple’s Metal API, it is still quite demanding to run. That is certainly due to its massive open-world environments, but clearly, the game could use some more optimization, and that applies to Windows and macOS. That said, this is a stable game for the most part, with little to no bugs on macOS. Hopefully, the brand-new Living Large update will improve performance. More on that below.

Art	Game	Genre	64-bit?	64-bit	API	M1 Support
	Subnautica	Adventure	Yes		Metal	Rosetta

Subnautica on Mac: Everything you need to know

Subnautica takes place on an alien oceanic planet. This is a massive open-world game that invites you to explore an underwater world while doing your best to survive. Indeed, survival is an important element in this game, and you’ll have to scavenge, craft equipment, pilot submarines, and more. Oh, and pay attention to the many creatures you’ll find underwater. Most of them are friendly, but a few are… not so much.

Did we mention Subnautica is a beautiful game too? The Eye Candy update made an already great-looking game look even better. Among other things, the update added Chromatic aberration, Bloom, Lens artifacts, Colour grading, Depth of field, and more.

Subnautica Living Large on macOS

Subnautica Living Large on Mac

And just recently, The Living Large Update was released. This is an important one, as it delivered hundreds of bug fixes, several quality-of-life updates, and performance improvements:

Our goal was always to bring both Subnautica and Below Zero onto unified versions of Unity, and with today’s update, that goal has been achieved. By doing this, we’ve been able to implement several quality of life features, fix many outstanding bugs, and introduce some performance improvements that were already available in Below Zero.

Subnautica Mac requirements

These are the game’s official Mac requirements:

How to play Subnautica on Mac

As mentioned before, Subnautica runs natively on macOS, including Intel-based Macs and M1/M2 Macs.

The game does require Rosetta 2 to run on Apple Silicon Macs. But Rosetta 2 works 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.

This means Subnautica 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 you play Subnautica on Mac? Benchmarks

These are the Subnautica M1 benchmarks we have gathered so far:

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 Adventure games? These are our favorites:

Game	★ Best Overall	Best Value	Best MacBook
	Minecraft	Psychonauts 2	Vampire Survivors
Genre	Sandbox	Exploration	Run & Gun
Release date	2009	2021	2022
Metascore	93	89	86
Our rating	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★
Requirements	✅ Not Demanding	✅ Not Demanding	✅ Not Demanding
Check Price	Check Price	Check Price	Check Price

Can you play Subnautica on a MacBook Pro?

Based on the tests performed by friend of the channel MrMacRight, Subnautica (and expansion Subnautica: Below Zero) is a very demanding game to run. This is also the case on Windows, which indicates the game could probably use further performance optimizations. Having said that, the game can still run on base M1 MacBook Pros. But to secure a smooth enough performance, you’ll need to run the game using Low settings and a modest resolution.

If you happen to have a more powerful MacBook Pro with either an M2, M1 Pro, or M1 Max chip, you will be able to run this game on Medium settings and 1080p and have fast frames per second above 60 FPS.

Download Subnautica for Mac

You can download the game on Steam.