How to Play Windows Games on a Mac

Most games ship for Windows only. Your Mac cannot open them directly. Two tools fix that, and one of them is much better for games.

This page explains how each one works, what it costs, and which one to pick.

Why your Mac cannot just run them

Until 2020, every Mac used an Intel chip. Boot Camp let you install Windows on a second partition and reboot into it. Games then ran at full native speed. Apple silicon Macs cannot do this, and Apple removed Boot Camp from them.

Apple silicon reads ARM instructions. Windows games are built as x86 binaries. A chip cannot execute the wrong instruction set, so the game means nothing to it.

Two options are left:

1. A translation layer.
2. A virtual machine.

We explain both. We recommend the first one for games.

Way 1: The translation layer

What it does

A translation layer sits between the game and macOS. The game makes a Windows system call. The layer converts that call into the macOS equivalent. Your Mac then does the work.

Think of a live interpreter. One side speaks Windows. The interpreter repeats it in macOS. Nobody learns a new language.

Nothing here is a copy of Windows. No Windows sits on your disk. You do not buy a Windows licence. You install one normal Mac app.

Wine, the engine underneath

The layer is called Wine. It is free and open source. People have built it since 1993, and it still improves every week.

Wine gives you the engine, not the dashboard. Raw Wine means hundreds of settings and no guidance.

CrossOver is the packaged version for the Mac. CodeWeavers build it, and their developers work on Wine itself. You get tuned per-game profiles, sane defaults, and someone to email when a game breaks.

Two translations run at once

Your Mac has to translate two separate things:

1. The CPU instructions. Apple's Rosetta 2 converts x86 to ARM while the game runs. It is fast and you never see it work.
2. The graphics calls. This is the hard half. The next section covers it.

Apple has said it will keep Rosetta 2 for older games even after it strips it out of the rest of the system. So this half is safe.

The graphics half

A game does not draw anything itself. It asks the GPU to draw, using a standard graphics API.

• On Windows, that API is DirectX.
• On macOS, it is Metal.

So the layer also converts DirectX into Metal. Every draw call, every frame. This is where your frame rate is won or lost.

Two backends do this job, and you will see both names:

• DXMT covers DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. Written by CodeWeavers developer 3Shain.
• D3DMetal covers DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. Apple wrote it, for its Game Porting Toolkit.

Both talk to Metal directly. That is why modern CrossOver often beats a virtual machine on frame rate.

You do not pick between them. CrossOver reads its own compatibility list and sets one for you. You can override it later, but you rarely need to.

DirectX is not one thing

DirectX has been through many versions. Your game targets one of them, and that version decides how well it translates.

The Steam store page usually lists the version. Some launchers also let you choose. If yours offers both 11 and 12, try 11 first. DXMT is often the faster path on a Mac.

Why we point you at CrossOver

CodeWeavers sells CrossOver. CodeWeavers also employs Wine developers and pushes that work back upstream, for free. Whisky, Heroic and every other Wine-based tool ran on the same code.

Parallels keeps its code private and gives nothing back.

Both products work. We think the first one earns your money.

Please note: we earn a small fee if you buy CrossOver through our link. It does not change your price, and it does not change what we write here.

What it costs

• Free trial: 14 days, no card.
• First year: about 74 US dollars.
• Renewal: about 34 US dollars per year.

Prices change. Check the CodeWeavers store before you buy.

How to set it up

1. Check your game on MacGamingDB first. Other players report what works.
2. Install CrossOver.
3. Click Install a Windows Application.
4. Search for your game, or for your launcher, such as Steam.
5. Let CrossOver pull down the dependencies it needs.
6. Sign in and install the game as normal.
7. Launch it from CrossOver.

Budget about 15 minutes. Most of that is download time.

What does not work

Kernel-level anti-cheat is the wall. It hooks deep into Windows and looks for anything abnormal. A translation layer is abnormal by definition, so it refuses to start the game.

Valorant, Fortnite and most competitive shooters will not run this way. That is the publisher's decision. No Mac tool gets around it.

Almost everything else has a good chance. Single-player titles work best.

Way 2: The virtual machine

A virtual machine is a full second computer in software. It runs in a window on your Mac. You install a real copy of Windows inside it, and the game runs inside that.

It works, and it is easy to reason about. It also costs you:

• A yearly licence for the VM app.
• A Windows licence on top.
• 50 GB or more of disk.
• Several GB of RAM reserved away from macOS.
• Real performance. You are running two operating systems at once.

It wins in two places, though:

• Old games. DirectX 9 and older titles often behave better in a VM. Real Windows handles those legacy paths itself, so nothing has to be translated. These games are also light enough that the VM overhead does not matter.
• Anti-cheat. It sometimes passes, because it sees genuine Windows.

Pick this route for a retro library, or if you already need Windows for work. For modern games, it is the slower and pricier choice.

Which one to pick

Start with the CrossOver trial. Test the games you actually care about before you pay.

Check your game first

Every title behaves differently. Most have already been tested by someone.

Search your game on MacGamingDB. Each report lists the Mac model, the settings used, and the frame rate.

Quick glossary

Last updated: July 2026