Mar 23, 2020  No one buys a MacBook expecting to play the latest games at the highest settings. That said, getting one doesn’t mean giving up on gaming either. That’s because MacBooks are perfectly capable of playing some amazing games. And in case you find that hard to believe, today we cover the 20 best MacBook games out there.

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. This is an overview of available storage space on your Mac, as well as the space used by different categories of files:

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. (The Manage button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.)

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

• Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  
• Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  
• Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

• Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
  
• Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  
• Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

• If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
  In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
• In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
• In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.

• If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
• In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

• Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
• Reminds you to delete used app installers
• Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
• Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

• Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
• Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
• Move files to an external storage device.
• Compress files.
• Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Does The Mac Come With Any Games Online

Learn more

• When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
• If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

If you're new to the Macintosh, or even if you've had one for a while, you may be interested in putting the work aside from time to time and playing games on your lovely machine. Macs may not have the same number of games as Windows PCs, but there are still plenty of places to get them if you know where to look. Here are some of my favorites. What are yours?

Steam

Valve's Steam service has been available for the Mac for a while now, and offers a pretty rich combination of indie and commercial titles for the Mac. They have their own Mac OS X section, which makes it very easy for Mac gamers to find what they're looking for.

What's more, Valve puts Mac gamers on a pretty even playing field with their Windows counterparts when it comes to sales and promotions — so you can usually get the same remarkable discounts. This weekend, for example, they're doing a free play weekend for the popular FPS Borderlands 2, with a 50 percent discount available as well.

Mac App Store

I've already said my piece about what I perceive to be the problems with the Mac App Store. But those issues notwithstanding, Apple deserves credit for bringing forth a robust marketplace for Mac app developers. What's more, Mac App Store is baked right in to OS X and uses Apple ID credentials, which means that it instantly has a potential user base of almost half a billion accounts, many more than the total number of Macs in use today.

The Mac App Store features indie and commercial titles alike, and also keeps lists of top paid and top free games, so there's something to appeal to gamers regardless of the budget. You can usually find the latest hot releases for Mac offered here, but sometimes it's a good idea to compare to Steam to see if you're getting the best deal.

MacGameStore

Even before the Mac App Store launched, MacGameStore came on the scene to provide Mac gamers with the latest downloads. In fact, they've been serving up games to Mac customers since 2005.

You can buy games directly from the web site, though there's a handy app that you can use if you prefer. MacGameStore regularly runs specials and deals, and if demos are available you can find links to them there too.

GameAgent.com

GameAgent.com started out as Mac game publisher Aspyr's way of reaching out to its own customers, but since then it's grown into an active Mac gaming service that offers downloads not just of Aspyr games but of other company's products too. They sport deals, favorites and games under $10, to make it easy to find something you might like.

If you set up an account with GameAgent, you can also use their Mac Match service to find out what games are supported on your system, taking the guesswork out of system requirements. You can also create a wish list, get access to special deals and more.

Feral Interactive

Mac game publisher Feral Interactive is a perennial darling of the Mac App Store, but you can usually find their games through other Mac game services too. If you'd prefer to go direct to the source, Feral is happy to take your money — they run their own Mac game download service, which is exclusive to their games.

Feral follows the 'traditional' model of Mac game publishing — they license top rated games from PC and console game publishers, then produce and publish Mac versions. So if you want the new Tomb Raider game, for example, or XCOM: Enemy Within, you know where to look.

GameTree Mac

TransGaming is a company that mostly stays behind the scenes — they're content to convert games to the Mac using their Cider technology (which has its distant origins in the open-source WINE project) and let the publishers themselves to the heavy lifting. But they also operate their own game sales service, called GameTree Mac.

GameTree Mac has the usual Mac-compatible products from other commercial and indie game publishers, but they also sport the titles that TransGaming has worked on, which often can't be found through other services. So there are some exclusives there that might peak your interest.

GOG.com

GOG.com — what was once branded as 'Good Old Games' — specializes in selling 'vintage' computer software. They do have some more recent releases like Torchlight, for example, but much of their specialty has to do with resurrecting games from the DOS and early Windows era, recycled to run on modern hardware.

They're much better about supporting the Mac than they used to be, and you can usually find games for $6 — $10 without too much of a problem. Just be advised that GOG.com games are typically running inside some emulation layer or shell in order to operate and haven't been updated, so you're getting the real look and feel of vintage games, with their unusual control schemes and blocky graphics to boot.

GamersGate

GamersGate is another online service where you can download Mac and PC games alike. The service is clientless, just like most of the other services we've talked about, but one cool thing about GamersGate is that they have 'gamified' the experience of using their service with a rewards system.

The more active you are on their boards — posting reviews, ratings, solving problems for other gamers, and more — the more 'Blue Coins' you'll earn, which will get you discount on future orders. You'll also gain experience points, which will entitle you to special discounts on games.

Straight from the source

More and more Mac game publishers are hopping on board with support for the platform for their own download services. Electronic Arts' Origin, for example, is where you'd go to download SimCity and connect to other players. Want to buy popular Blizzard games like World of Warcraft or Diablo III? Off to Battle.net with you, then.

Does The Mac Come With Any Games Free

So look around — Mac games are a lot more available than you might think. And have fun gaming!

Do you have other favorite places to buy Mac games? Sound off in the comments.

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Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

Does The Mac Come With Any Games Online

Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.