NVIDIA GeForce NOW For Mac

Cloud gaming services are popping up everywhere, and it's easy to see why. People want to play games wherever they are, on any device, or even avoid buying a gaming PC or console altogether. If you already own a bunch of games and just want to play them from unsupported devices, NVIDIA GeForce NOW may be your best option at present.

While NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform has been around for a few years, it has really come into its own recently. It has widespread availability and support for almost all game distribution platforms, and it allows you to play on all sorts of devices, including Macs.

If you're a gamer who prefers Macs, life is tough. Most games just aren't available, and the future looks bleak when it comes to M1 support. While GeForce NOW doesn't run natively on Apple Silicon yet, Rosetta 2 emulation should provide a good experience for the time being, as the process isn't particularly resource-intensive.

As long as you have a good internet connection, any Mac that can play high-definition video should have no problem running GeForce NOW. If your device cannot be connected to a router via an Ethernet cable, make sure the router supports 5 GHz Wi-Fi. 2.4 GHz will give you a stuttery, unpleasant experience.

It's worth noting that, unlike Google Stadia, you have to own the games you want to play through GeForce NOW. Simply add them to your library from various platforms — Steam, Origin, Ubisoft Connect, and Epic Games (Battle.net is, sadly, no longer supported). Alternatively, you can sync your entire Steam library.

All that's left now is to launch your game and start playing. The service will choose a server and streaming quality automatically, but you can also customize the settings if you wish. Note that if you are a Free user, wait times can be considerable — up to a few hours when a lot of users are connected.

Once the game has been launched, press Cmd+G to bring up the menu. You will have access to NVIDIA's video capture and instant replay features, formerly known as ShadowPlay, in addition to a screenshot tool, visual filters, and OSD.

You can customize all these features, change the default shortcuts, and manage storage options. This menu is also where Free users can check how much playtime they have left from their 1-hour session.

Assuming you have a good Internet connection, latency will depend on the location of the nearest server. Even in a best-case scenario, though, with low-quality streaming settings, you can expect the service to add anywhere from 30 to 40 ms of latency. This value goes up if you increase streaming quality or are not close to one of the available servers.

Needless to say, you're going to be at a disadvantage in competitive multiplayer games that rely on quick reactions, but slower-paced titles, as well as single-player games, should be more than responsive enough.

As far as visual quality is concerned, GeForce now supports up to 1080p 60 FPS, and a bitrate of 50 Mbps. Lack of 4K support is a downside, but 1080p quality was quite good in my experience. Of course, the biggest factor here is still the quality of your internet connection.

From what I've seen, GeForce NOW provides a seamless experience, or as much as you can expect from a cloud gaming service. Games are launched as if they were installed on your machine, and subscribers shouldn't have to deal with queues except on rare occasions — and even those will be very short.

Free users, however, often have to wait hours to launch a game. Unless you play when there is very little activity in your region, or your server just isn't that populated, the free edition isn't suitable for much other than testing the service before subscribing.

While it does have its faults, GeForce NOW is a great option for users who already own a bunch of games and want to play them on their Macs as well. A subscription is pretty much required if you plan on using the service regularly, and it's not really ideal for competitive esports titles, but it expands the macOS game library vastly, and there are countless games that you can play with no substantial drop in quality and responsiveness.