u/31c0c3

▲ 26 r/btd6

I was recently playing BTD6 on my mac, and like the nerd I am, I noticed that it showed 'Apple' under Activity Monitor now. This didn't seem to be mentioned anywhere else online so I figured I'd make a PSA

I also confirmed this looking at some of the game's internal files.

https://steamdb.info/depot/960093/history/ helped me isolate these. You can also see that the newer builds are 200MB+ larger in size since they need to ship arm64 slices for the Unity player and other dependencies.

This is with manifest 7057555437343735214 (dated Feb. 20, 2026), showing only an x86_64 slice

admin@mac Contents % file Frameworks/GameAssembly.dylib 
Frameworks/GameAssembly.dylib: Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64

admin@mac Contents % file MacOS/BloonsTD6 
MacOS/BloonsTD6: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

And this is with manifest 1215084280150087909 (dated Apr. 9, 2026), showing both x86_64 and arm64 slice

admin@mac Contents % file Frameworks/GameAssembly.dylib 
Frameworks/GameAssembly.dylib: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64] [arm64]
Frameworks/GameAssembly.dylib (for architecture x86_64):Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64
Frameworks/GameAssembly.dylib (for architecture arm64):Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library arm64

admin@mac Contents % file MacOS/BloonsTD6 
MacOS/BloonsTD6: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64]
MacOS/BloonsTD6 (for architecture x86_64):Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
MacOS/BloonsTD6 (for architecture arm64):Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

This should translate into better power efficiency and performance for apple silicon mac users since it doesn't need to run through Rosetta 2, although probably nothing massive because Rosetta 2 is already well optimized.

TLDR: M series (and A18 Pro) mac users of BTD6 should enjoy better performance and power usage now

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u/31c0c3 — 13 days ago