Combining soccer with racing, Rocket League is an outstanding physics-based game with high-flying cars. The gameplay is extremely addictive as it is, but take it online only, and you get one of the most engrossing multiplayer experiences in modern gaming.
Unfortunately, developer Psyonix stopped supporting Rocket League on Mac in 2020, which meant that online functionality was disabled for macOS players. Since then, the game was removed from Steam and became free-to-play on Epic Games for Windows only.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t play the game on Mac. In this post, we’ll teach you how you can play Rocket League on a Mac, including Intel and Apple Silicon models.
Can you play Rocket League on Mac?
Despite not officially supporting macOS anymore, Rocket League can be played on Mac thanks to third-party such as CrossOver or through Bootcamp if you still use an Intel Mac.
The best method we’d recommend to run Rocket League on Mac is CrossOver 22. Not only can it run Rocket League with a quite spectacular performance, but you can also try it for free (CrossOver has a 14-day free trial, no questions asked).
We cover how to easily install and use CrossOver in our step-by-step guide here.
Bootcamp
If you still own an Intel-based Mac, you can also use Bootcamp. It may require you to constantly restart your computer but BootCamp remains the best method to run Windows games on Mac, performance-wise.
These are all the other methods that you can use (they all work, including Parallels and Streaming):
| Method | Cost | Windows required? | Reboot required? | M1 Mac support? | Pros and Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CrossOver | Free | No | No | Yes | ✅ Extremely easy to use ✅ Good performance ❌ Complicated to set up ❌ Not compatible with all games |
| Parallels | $79.99 | Yes | No | Yes | ✅ Easy to use ❌ Limited performance ❌ Requires a Windows lincense |
| Bootcamp | Free | Yes | Yes | No | ✅ Great performance ❌ Constant rebooting ❌ Only supports Intel Macs |
| Streaming | Varies | No | No | Yes | ✅ Good performance ❌ Requires excellent internet access ❌ Expensive |
How to play Rocket League on Mac
To play Rocket League on Mac using CrossOver, you’re going to need to install the Heroic Launcher (which acts as a replacement for the Epic Games launcher, which does not work using CrossOver).
You can find all the steps in this video.
Playing the discontinued version of Rocket League
Alternatively, if you previously purchased Rocket League on Steam, you can still download it and run it natively on macOS! However, we did say this is a discontinued version without online support. If you’re still curious, you can give it a try. Or check out the native version of the game in action below:
Is Rocket League even worth it?
Rocket League is one of those games that the older it gets, the more popular it becomes. Yet, Rocket League’s secret is simple: a thriving Multiplayer community.
And there’s a reason why everybody loves this game so much, even after all these years. Reviewers all praised it, which is why the game has an impressive 86 Metascore (weighted average of scores given by critics).
Looking at what the biggest outlets had to say, they all had a similar conclusion. Take for example Gamespot, which gave it a 9/10 score and said:
Rocket League emulates the emotional surges typical of The Beautiful Game, such as the rush of an unexpected fast break or a well-timed header into a goal. With Rocket League, the promising concept of combining two wonderful things–cars and soccer–is equally magnificent in execution.
This game is just that good. It’s extremely hard to master, yet so much fun after a few matches.
Rocket League Mac requirements
These are the system requirements of the discontinued Mac version (to give you an idea of what to expect using CrossOver):
- OS: macOS 10.8.5
- Processor: Intel Core i5 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 or Iris Pro Graphics
- Storage: 5 GB available space
Can you play Rocket League on Mac? Benchmarks
We previously tested the native Mac version of the game on the following machines:
- 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)
- Mac Mini (Late 2014): 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM, Intel Iris 5100 (1.5GB)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012): 5.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000 (1.5GB)
These are the settings we used:
- 1280×720 resolution
- Render Quality/Detail: Quality
- Vertical Sync On
- Anti Aliasing: FXAA Low
The Results: A surprisingly easy game to run!
We were pleasantly surprised with the performance levels Rocket League delivered:
Download Rocket League for Mac
You can download Rocket League from Epic Games.
The Can You Run It articles are always interesting regardless of whether I’m interested in playing the game or not. From what I’ve seen, the Unigine Heaven benchmark is aimed at graphics performance, which is usually the issue with modern games. I’ve run a couple of tests to see what changing some of the parameters does.
I’d like to see some Heaven benchmark numbers for the test machines in these articles. If we know the number and the settings to obtain that number, we can run the same benchmark on our machines. That would give a pretty good indication of how well our machines will run something.
It’s good that you mention this… It’s exactly what we have been trying to do (I actually asked all of the guys to run the Heaven test) and reading your comment I noticed I didn’t even include the results… And everything is poorly explained on that front.
I know what to work on for the next review 😉
This is one of those games that I really think more or less needs to run at 60 FPS to be fully enjoyable. It does so on the game consoles and the performance in Windows is quite a lot better compared to how it runs in macOS, at least on my machine: 6-core Mac Pro (Mid 2010) with GTX 970 graphics. Which makes me wonder – does anyone know if Rocket League use Metal or OpenGL for the Mac version? I’ve heard the later versions of the Unreal engine only supports Metal, but the question is if that includes Rocket League? In a way I hope not, since a change to Metal hopefully would give a welcome performance boost in macOS. 🙂
Hey. I haven’t found official information on this but I’m 99% sure it uses OpenGL (it was released before the big wave of Metal enabled games and hasn’t received any noticeable performance updates since).
If you’re aiming for competitive multiplayer 60 FPS is a must, but a casual player should do fine with 30FPS. But hey, that’s really subjective and I’m sure some people will really find 30FPS to be way too slow! 😉
What controller should I use with Mac ?
Thanks for the review, I shall try Rocket League on Mac!
Don’t own the game, but it’s always sad to see a Mac game go. We need more, not less!
I can’t seem to download crossover onto my Macbook Air. It’s running the latest iOS and other requirements, but free trial will not download.