Windows 11 is finally catching up to Windows 10 with Steam gamers, Mac remains a lowly third place with help from the Steam Deck

Steam Library on desktop.

What you need to know

• Steam's latest monthly hardware survey shows a significant gain in share for Windows 11, which is now starting to close at pace on Windows 10. 
• Windows 11's share on Steam jumped by over 3% last month, and is now only 6% behind Windows 10. 
• Pour one out for your Mac gamer friends, they're still less popular than Linux. 

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It's that time again, the latest Steam monthly hardware survey is out and April's results show one significant change. With Windows collecting over 96% of Steam's users by operating system (naturally), it's when we drill down into the breakdown of which version of Windows that it gets more interesting. 

April 2024 saw a leap of 3.54% for Windows 11 in share, with Windows 10 dropping by almost the same amount at 3.38%. Windows 10 is still the most popular version of Windows, with over half of Steam's users still on it, but Windows 11 is gaining fast finally. 

There's now just under 6% between the two, so for gamers at least, more and more folks are getting themselves updated at last to the latest version of Microsoft's OS. And they should be doing, really, because Windows 10 won't be properly supported forever, with October 2025 currently listed as its end of support date. By then, we'd hope to see the majority of Steam gamers using Windows 11, frankly. 

The Steam Deck is helping keep Mac's share of Steam gamers in last place.  (Image credit: Rebecca Spear / Windows Central)

The latest results also continue to show that Linux remains more popular with Steam gamers than macOS, which isn't surprising. Though both Mac and Linux actually dropped a hair in their overall share, with Windows increasing by that same hair. 

It doesn't take a genius to work out what's helping juice up the Linux numbers to keep Mac at the bottom, either. With "Arch Linux" being the most popular distro used by Linux gamers, it's the Steam Deck at work. SteamOS is an Arch-based distro, and while it'd be nice to see Valve break out its own platform separately, we've got what we've got. 

So, next time you see a Mac gamer, give them a hug. They're a dying breed. Then show them your sweet gaming laptop, Steam Deck, ROG Ally or Lenovo Legion Go.