How to play Windows games on your Mac without Windows

Source: iMore

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

Source: Nvidia

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

Source: 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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Running Windows on Mac is Easy with these Software

Mac users can resonate with the awesome experience it provides to its users.

But it’s also true that nothing in the world can be 100% effective or flawless. That means your precious Mac also has some shortcomings.

The tech giant Apple prefers to go with things in its own style, and in the process of doing so, it might annoy its customers.

Modern-day businesses are dominated by Windows computers. Many important applications and programs that a number of industries use can only run on Microsoft Windows.

Example – the Microsoft Office for Windows has the Access database, which is not available for Mac.

Understanding this, Apple offers its users the choice between macOS or Windows for that matter.

Fortunately, there are different ways you can run Windows on Mac in order to access all those professional applications, software tools, Access, and mind-boggling Windows games.

So, when you feel the urgency for switching to Windows, you can invest a few dollars on buying software, which allows you to run Windows instead of buying another laptop or desktop.

There are many benefits; let’s explore them.

Performance

When you first install Windows on your Mac and start working on it, you could feel a bump in its performance. If you want to use the system for utilizing useful software tools or applications, it will work wonders for you.

Additionally, if you want to play high-end video games on it, you can enjoy a smooth gaming experience for hours without a hitch.

Great for developers

Developing websites, applications or software is tricky, and testing them is more time-consuming and frustrating. Developers know the pain of finding errors, bugs, or other complications that require their immediate attention and fixation.

Besides, they have to check their functionality across different operating systems, which further burden them. So, if they do not separate macOS and Windows computers, they can install Windows on their Mac and test the programs.

Windows works best on Mac

This is hard, but true!

Windows works best on Mac computers because of the robustness of Apple and powerful performance like greater graphics, fewer lags, and high frame rates of Windows. Both technologies make Windows on Mac work smooth like butter and fast like lightning.

Reduced costs

You don’t require investing in a Windows computer. Hence, it cuts down extra expenses, which is a huge relief for individual or small business.

Are you convinced yet?

Let’s explore some of the software you can use to run Windows on your Mac computer.

Parallels

An application that delivers fast performance and easy to use is desirable. And Parallels has got it covered for you!

Run Windows on your Mac system without rebooting it. It includes over 30 utilities that simplify your tasks on both Windows and Mac.

Keep accessing and using data and apps from any operating system and device from anywhere. You can develop and test across different OSes for Mac in a VM, access MS Office for Internet Explorer and Windows. Move your files, applications, etc. quickly from a PC to your Mac.

The software is compatible with various Mac versions, including MacBook Pro, MacBook, iMac Pro, Mac Pro, or Mac mini. Share files, copy & paste images as well as text, drag & drop files from Windows applications and Mac seamlessly.

Parallels are easy to set up and offer fast performance, with apps running effortlessly with no slowdowns. You can select your view and utilize features like:

• Greater flexibility of working with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, OS X, Linux, macOS Server, and Unix
• Touch Bar to get instant access as well as customization
• Works well with Boot Camp
• 1-click tuning to optimize VM performance and settings for software development, testing, design, productivity, and games
• Free upgrades for the latest versions

What’s more – students can save 50% through a special Parallel academic version for desktop. It includes 40+ 1-click productivity tools where you can minimize distractions, take screenshots, etc. you also get 30-day premium support 24/7 through phone and emails.

VMware Fusion

With VMware Fusion, you can choose 100s of operating systems that are supported on it. It includes the latest Windows 10, latest macOS, and even Linux distributions.

The common platform of VMware lets you connect with ESXi, vSphere as well as Workstation servers to manage, launch and control the physical hosts and virtual machines alike. You can transfer VMs easily from the data center of vSphere to your Mac desktop to run it in Fusion.

Additionally, Fusion Pro also has a RESTful API for integrating with advanced development tools such as Docker, Ansible, Chef, Vagrant, and more.

Hence, VMware is capable of aligning with modern DevOps-oriented and Agile-based production pipelines. Its features are:

• Run any OS on macOS 10.15 Catalina and avoid rebooting
• Supports Dark Mode
• Sidecar feature to drive Windows using iPad
• It uses the graphics technology – Apple Metal for accelerated 3-D graphics
• Supports complex and GPU-intensive apps and games
• Unity View Mode to hide your Windows desktop, allowing to use Windows applications same as Mac applications

Boot Camp

Boot Camp is a Mac utility, allowing you to switch between Windows and macOS. If you want to use Windows on your Mac, just download a Windows 10 copy and let the utility do the rest. The Boot Camp Assistant helps you install the operating system.

Boot Camp is also referred to as dual-booting that makes you run macOS and Windows on a single hard drive side by side. This method offers better performance as compared to virtual machines as Windows can leverage all the resources of the system.

The steps involved in Windows installation powered by Boot Camp Assistant:

• Create a Windows partition and set its size based on your requirements. Note: You cannot change the size later
• Format your Boot camp partition
• Now, install the Windows
• After Windows installation, follow the instruction on the screen to install Windows drivers and Boot Camp

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is one of the powerful virtualization products that both enterprises and home users can leverage.

The feature-rich, Open Source software is an Intel64/AMD64 and x86 virtualization product and exhibits high performance. It is licensed under GNU GPL.

It supports multiple guest OS, including Windows 7, 8, 10, Vista, XP, 2000, Server 2003, and NT 4.0 along with Linux 4.x, 3.x, 2.6, and 2.4; DOS/Windows 3.x, OpenSolaris, Solaris, OpenBSD, and OS/2.

VirtualBox is constantly evolving with frequent releases, features, platforms on which it runs, support for OS, etc. It is as a result of dedicated effort by the community boosted with encouragement to contribute more. And Oracle always ensures that VirtualBox meets quality criteria to continue serving the consumers.

CrossOver

Run Windows smoothly on your Mac using CrossOver. It runs 1000s of Windows applications on Mac, including software for utility, productivity, design, games, and more.

With CrossOver, you require no VMs or Windows licenses. Just enjoy native functionalities like keyboard shortcuts, copy and paste, mission control, etc.

CrossOver is simple to set up with 1-click installation and use applications at top speed. Available at a starting price of just $39.95, the software is an economical choice. It also saves plenty of your computer resources and occupies only the space the Windows programs need while saving you from hassles of rebooting.

It is compatible with popular accounting software such as Quicken, office and business software like MS Office, gaming software such as Steam, and many more. Its features are:

• Compatible with Catalina
• works at native speed
• Simple installation
• Integrates seamlessly with a desktop environment
• ‘Bottles’ – a CrossOver feature that allows individual Windows environments such as Windows 7, XP, etc. for getting packaged and contained with your existing programs.

PlayOnMac

PlayOnMac lets you install and then use multiple software and games easily that are designed to run on Windows.

The software is FREE as compared to other solutions like VMs and Boot Camp, whose licenses require you to invest hefty money on them. It is user-friendly and does not compromise on performance. In addition, it integrates seamlessly with different OS types and requires no reboot.

Many alternatives for running Windows on Mac use Windows OS for running Windows-based programs. However, Wine stands out from the league. It is a kind of compatibility layer that allows you to run your Windows applications on different POSIX-compliant OS like macOS, BSD, and Linux.

Are you wondering why it is named as ‘wine’?

Originally, ‘Wine’ is an acronym used in the place of “Wine Is Not an Emulator”.

So, as the name suggests, Wine translates API calls of Windows into POSIX calls on-the-go, rather than simulating the internal logic of Windows like an emulator or virtual machine. Consequently, the memory and performance penalties associated with other methods arise.

Hence, by using Wine, you can integrate your Windows applications cleanly into your macOS. For improved experience and convenience, you can also try Wine with a 3rd-party WineBottler.

Conclusion

To all the Mac users wanting to leverage the power of Windows on the same computer, try any of the above-explained software. Choose the one based on your requirements and budget and keep enjoying all sorts of software compatible on both macOS and Windows.