If you plan on testing out a lot of software or you use software that Wine doesn’t support well, you’ll have a much better time just running it in a virtual machine. If you can’t get an application working, you should perform a web search for its name and “wine” or “winebottler” for tips on what advanced functions you might need.īear in mind that WineBottler is best if you have a single program or handful of programs that work well. exe files directly with Wine should generally work. However, that often isn’t necessary–just executing. Depending on the application, you may need various third-party libraries from the Winetricks list, DLL override options, or runtime arguments here to make it work. exe file used to install the application and you can install it as an. If you choose to convert it to an OS X application bundle, you will be taken to the Advanced screen in WineBottler. You can then launch WineBottler from your Applications folder. Drag and drop both Wine and WineBottler applications to your Applications folder to install them, just like you would any other Mac application. When this article was written, that meant OS X El Capitan and Yosemite users needed to download version 1.8. Be sure to download a version that works on your release of Mac OS X. How to Run Windows Software on a Mac With WineBottler

The other third-party applications will work similarly, though some (like CrossOver and Porting Kit) may be much more streamlined for the apps they actually support-so if you’re looking to run a specific game, it may be worth checking to see if the other apps support that game for easy setup.

We’ll be using WineBottler for this tutorial, as it seems like the most popular option among Mac users. There’s also the free Porting Kit, which makes installing classic games easy, and the commercial CrossOver Mac, which is the only application here you have to pay for. Third-party tools include WineBottler, PlayOnMac, and Wineskin. They include their own Wine software, too, so you only have to download one thing. They often perform tweaks that you’d have to perform by hand if you were using the barebones Wine software.

Instead, you should probably consider one of the third-party projects that take the Wine source code and build a more convenient interface on top of it, one that helps you quickly install and configure common applications.

Wine notepad++ mac