The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows .. or do you?
There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.
GeForce Now
Jun 26, 2015 DirectX 11 is coming to Linux thanks to CodeWeavers and Wine The DirectX 11 support coming to CrossOver and Wine will let more Windows games 'just run' on Linux. Mac OS X, and other non. Jun 10, 2009 Wine Reviews has release information and reviews of Windows applications and games running on Linux Mac OS X and Android using Wine from WineHQ.org Q4Wine PlayOnLinux PlayOnMac WineBottler WineSkin WineTricks and Wine-Staging. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix. This story, 'MacDX provides DirectX support for the Mac' was originally published by PCWorld. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission.
Ios emulator garageband download. Oct 03, 2017 Garageband is available as free for iOS devices. However, for Windows users for professional work, they will have to opt for another apps or a way. Nonetheless, with the help of the iPadian emulator, it is possible to download the free version of the. Mar 09, 2019 Download the iPadian emulator on your PC and install it. Launch the iOS emulator and search for the GarageBand and click enter. Tap on the application and downloading will be started. You can use the application on windows with iPadian after the download is completed.
Download DirectX for Wine for free. A set of patches against WINE to implement DirectX 9 allowing Modern Games and 3D applications to run under WINE. The patches include many experimental and beta features that have not yet made it into the stable WINE source tree. Dec 16, 2019 There are certain things WINE will never be able to do, seeing as Microsoft uses a great deal of proprietary code in Windows. Microsoft's DirectX is proprietary. Apparently, getting WINE or any of the virtualization systems to work with software requiring DirectX 11 or 12 isn't happening. Jan 13, 2010 What I did was install DirectX 9.0c in Linux using Wine and then installed Tropico 3. Lo and behold, it works, beautifully. I can play the game with details set to high without any problems or glitches, everything runs smoothly and even the sound quality is great. In this article, you will learn how to install DirectX using Wine.
PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.
For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!
The Wine Project
The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.
Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.
As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.
You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.
Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.
CrossOver Mac
CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.
CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.
My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.
Boxer
If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.
With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.
Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.
Some final thoughts
In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.
Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.
How do you play your Windows games on Mac?
Let us know in the comment below!
Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.
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The following instructions are heavily inspired by /u/uhohohdear.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: ~~ WOTC just released a new executable that should work with these original directions. I updated the download link below.
Dependencies
- Your macOS/OS X version must be 10.8 or greater
- Your Mac must support OpenGL 4.0 or greater (you can find out whether it does here)
- You must download the Magic the Gathering Arena Windows executable
- You must download makeMTGArena.zip and unzip it. It will create MTGArena.app, which is a custom Wineskin wrapper you can use to install MTGArena.
Note: If you're like me, you may not trust unofficial Wineskin wrappers. Unfortunately, the Wineskin project is way behind and only supports Wine 2.x. We need at least Wine 3.0 to run MTGA. If Wineskin ever gets around to updating, you can get the official download here.
Installing MTGA
- Drag the custom Wineskin wrapper to your
/Applications/
folder. - Right click/Control click the Wineskin wrapper (MTGArena.app) and select 'Open'
Note: The wrapper has 'Screen Options' and then 'Auto Detect GPU Info for Direct3D' unchecked and 'Use Mac Driver instead of X11' checked. If you complete installation of MTGA and are getting DirectX 11 errors, come back to this step and change these settings, but the defaults sjould work.
- Click 'Install Software'
- Click 'Choose Setup Executable'
- Navigate to and select the Magic the Gathering Arena Windows executable you previously downloaded ('MTGAInstaller_0.1.1615.720204.msi')
- Wait for MTGA to install and ignore any warnings (hopefully you won't have any!). When complete, click 'Finish'
- Back in Wineskin, a 'Choose Executable' window should be available. Select 'MTGA.exe'.
You can now click 'Quit' and start playing MTGA! If you'd like to add Retina support, carry on.
Adding Retina/HiDPI Support
- In Wineskin, click 'Advanced' and then select 'Tools'
- Click 'Registry Editor (regedit)'
- Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Wine -> Mac Driver
(ifMac Driver
doesn't exist, navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Wine
and then useEdit -> New -> Key
to create a new key namedMac Driver
) - Select
Edit -> New -> String Value
from the menu and name itRetinaMode
- Double click
RetinaMode
, set its value toy
, and click 'OK' - Close the Registry Editor and then click 'Config Utility (winecfg)' in Wineskin's Advanced -> Tools menu
- Click on the 'Graphics' tab, enter the correct dpi under 'Screen resoution', and click 'OK'.
Note: You can find your screen's dpi on Apple Support or via DPI Love.
You can now close Wineskin and start playing MTGA in high resolution!
FAQS
I'm getting a DirectX 11 error and it's making me sad.
This wrapper already includes the fixes below, so you should not have these issues.
.net Framework
Repeat steps 0 and 1 under 'Installing MTGA' and trying unchecking 'Auto Detect GPU Info for Direct3D' and checking 'Use Mac Driver instead of X11'. If you're still having problems, use TextEdit to create a plaintext file (use
shift+command+T
to toggle between rich text and plaintext) with the following information:Save this file as
d3d.reg
. Go to /Applications/
then right click/control click the Wineskin wrapper (MTGArena.app) and select 'Show Package Contents'. Open 'Wineskin.app'. In Wineskin, click 'Advanced', select 'Tools', and then click 'Registry Editor (regedit)'. From the 'Registry' menu, choose 'Import Registry File..' and select the d3d.reg
file you just created. Close regedit, exit Wineskin, and try running MTGArena again.I'm playing MTGA in windowed mode and, after switching to another program, it stops responding.
Everything is fine. Just grab the MTGA window and wiggle it a little bit. Everything should be back to normal.
I tried to launch MTGA and I get some error that crashes the program!
Again, the fix for this is already applied but I left the question in the FAQ, you should not have this issue with this wrapper.
This is a common issue with running MTGA in Wine. Close the program and wait a few seconds. It should work fine on the second attempt. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If this really bugs you, here's a fix so that MTGA will launch perfectly every time:
- Right/control-click the Wineskin wrapper (MTGArena.app) and select 'Show Package Contents'
- Navigate to
Contents/MacOS
- Rename 'WineskinLauncer' to 'WineskinLauncher.bin'
- Create a new plaintext file in
Content/MacOS
and save it as 'WineskinLauncher'
Note: If you're using TextEdit, make sure you've turned off the option to add a .txt file extension.
- Paste the following inside of the new WineskinLauncher file:
- In Terminal, run
chmod 755 /Applications/MTGArena.app/Contents/MacOS/WineskinLauncher
Wine Directx 11
There's an Arena update and nothing works anymore!
Yeah. It's annoying. You will need to download a new msi and reinstall.
Can You Download Directx On Wine Mac Os
- Either unzip the empty Wineskin wrapper again (MTGArena.app) or right click MTGArena and select 'Show Package Contents' and click 'Wineskin' then click 'Advanced', then 'Tools', then 'Rebuild Wrapper'. You should now have an 'empty' wrapper again. Exit.
- Double click the MTGArena and select 'Install Software'
- Click 'Choose Setup Executable'
- Navigate to and select the Magic the Gathering Arena Windows msi file you previously downloaded
- Install as above.