What's the current state of Terraria on MacOS? (March 2025)

[itzMich02]

I've seen a lot of people complaining about Terraria's performance on Mac, especially around 2022/2023. I'm considering buying a Mac Mini M4 and I'd like to know if it will run this game well because I've liked this game a lot and it would be great to play it comfortably from this Mac Mini, which from what I know is very powerful. I'd be grateful if any of you could update me on the Terraria situation on Mac now because, apart from the various complaints and videos that showed the game in an unplayable state a few years ago, I haven't seen any more public updates on performance or fixes for this issue.

I'd be happy if someone that play or played the game recently on Mac could give me an opinion

 

[HandsomeSquirrel🐿️]

It works well on my M1 iMac, Terraria being absolutely playable.
There are a few things that drop FPS for me for some reason, like Resonance Scepter and Flame Waker Boots, but overall I find no significant issues.

 

[itzMich02]

It works well on my M1 iMac, Terraria being absolutely playable.
There are a few things that drop FPS for me for some reason, like Resonance Scepter and Flame Waker Boots, but overall I find no significant issues.

Thanks for the reply, at least I can be at ease knowing that I won’t have any issues playing it. By any chance, may I ask if you're using the command /gldevice:Vulkan, or are you running it natively?

 

[HandsomeSquirrel🐿️]

By any chance, may I ask if you're using the command /gldevice:Vulkan, or are you running it natively?

I have no idea what the former of those means, so I'm not sure. I just play it on Steam.

 

[itzMich02]

I have no idea what the former of those means, so I'm not sure. I just play it on Steam.

Basically, that code forces Steam to use the Metal graphics API to run the game, which is the rendering engine used by Macs. This should make the game run more efficiently. It’s a method I’ve seen used to mitigate performance drops in Terraria, but since it’s already running well without it, that’s a good thing. Thanks for replying!

 

[trya]

me right now on mac... works ok i guess