Discord for Mac finally gains native Apple silicon support

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Discord on devices
Discord on devices (Image credit: Discord)

What you need to know

  • Discord has now added full Apple silicon support to its Mac app.
  • A single Discord app is available for both Intel and M1-powered Macs.

The popular voice comms and chat app Discord has now been updated to add native support for Apple silicon for the first time.

While Discord has always worked on Apple silicon Macs via the magic of Rosetta 2 emulation, we heard late last year that the company was working on a version of the app that was designed to run natively on Apple's M1-powered Macs. That work has now been completed and the latest version of Discord for Mac is a universal binary — people can download a single file whether they're using a Mac running Apple or Intel silicon.

While Discord hasn't made a big announcement so far, it seems that the universal binary version of Discord has been around for a few days at least. Posts to Discord's own support forums outed the update two days ago.

Apps that are built specifically for Apple silicon will perform better on those machines than when they are being run via Rosetta 2. While Discord had previously made a native version of its Mac app available in beta form, this week is the first time the update has been made available to all as the default download option.

Apple silicon chips power everything from the latest MacBook Air to the new Mac Studio with the only machine still waiting for its release from Intel being the Mac Pro. Apple confirmed during the Mac Studio announcement that a Mac Pro refresh is in the pipeline, however.

Discord is one of the best Mac apps at what it does and the switch to a native Apple silicon build is definitely welcome.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.