How to use Wine on Mac

In this article, we will examine how to set up Wine Crossover, which allows you to run Windows applications and games on the macOS Monterey 12 operating system on an Apple Mac Silicon M1 or M2 computer.

How to Use Wine (Wine-Crossover) to Run Windows Apps on macOS Monterey 12 on Apple Mac M1/M2 PC

As you know, Windows-compatible programs or games are not supported on Mac computers. Some application and game developers can develop their projects for both Windows and macOS platforms. However, some applications or games are developed for Microsoft Windows systems only.

If you’re using a non-Apple computer, you probably have a Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating system. Therefore, if you have been using the Windows system for a long time, you are familiar with applications such as Microsoft Office.

However, if you need to use an Apple computer for a job change or project management, you may want to use applications like Office that you are used to. To give another example, you may want to update an old camera or printer by installing the developer application on your Mac PC.

In such cases, you will seek solutions to run Windows applications on your Apple Mac computer. As the simplest method to overcome these problems, you can use the Boot Camp tool developed by Apple to install a Windows 10 virtual machine on your existing macOS system and experience the applications you use again.

Using a virtual machine can be tedious at times because it is not recommended because it will take time to boot the system and you may experience performance issues. Therefore, you can quickly install and run 64 Bit or 32 Bit applications or games on your Mac system using the Wine infrastructure.

On computers with Apple’s M1 and M2 Silicon architecture, Wine software may sometimes not work properly. In this case, you may need to obtain and use the Crossover app, which is a paid solution.

You can choose to use one of the software types such as Wineskin or PlayOnMac as the open source Wine application on your Mac computer with macOS Monterey 12 version installed without paying any fee.

How to Install Homebrew

You can download applications from the Store to your Mac computer, or you can install an application from Homebrew using a terminal. In short, Homebrew is an open-source package management system that you can use for free.

You can quickly and easily download available packages or software from the extensive Homebrew database. You can also install Wine via Homebrew to use Windows-compatible software with EXE or MSI extension on your MacBook.

   Step 1

Before you can install Wine, you must have Xcode tools installed on your system. When you execute the command below in the terminal, Xcode tools will be downloaded and installed automatically before Homebrew is installed.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

   Step 2

After successfully installing Homebrew, you will see the installation notification in the terminal output. To learn more about Homebrew and access its documentation, you can visit the official website https://docs.brew.sh/.

   Step 3

After configuring Xcode and Homebrew, execute the “brew install –no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wine-crossover” command in the terminal to install Wine.

brew install --no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wine-crossover

When you read the warning in the terminal output, you can see that a 64-bit prefix will be created by default. If you are going to install 32 Bit application, you can use the “WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg” command to create 32 Bit prefix manually.

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg

   Step 4

While installing Wine-Crossover, Gatekeeper will be disabled for the applications you will install to run smoothly. When the installation is complete, you can see that Wine-Crossover was successfully installed in the terminal output.

   Step 5

To run the Wine application, open Applications and double-click the Wine Crossover icon. The program will start running via a terminal without an interface. In this terminal window, you can see the version of the program and how to use it.

   Step 6

If you want to open the wine configuration, execute the “wine winecfg” command in the terminal and you can check the version of the program or change the default operating system version from the About tab in the window that opens.

wine winecfg

How to Install a Windows Program

After installing Wine on macOS / Mac, you can now easily install EXE software. It will be enough to double-click on the 64-bit application you downloaded to your PC to start the installation wizard.

   Step 1

You can install Notepad++, a great note application, on your PC via Wine. To download Notepad++, visit https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/ and download the current version.

When you download the Installer.exe file, you can see that its icon has the Wine icon. Double-click the setup file and then allow Wine to access the desktop folder.

   Step 2

When the installation wizard starts, select the language of the Notepad++ application and click OK.

   Step 3

After selecting the language of the program, click Next to proceed through the setup wizard.

   Step 4

Click the I Agree button to read and accept the license agreement of the Note application.

   Step 5

Do not change the installation location of the program and click Next to continue to install the program to the location specified in the wizard.

   Step 6

If you are a professional user of Notepad, configure its components and continue.

   Step 7

Choose to create a desktop shortcut and click the Install button.

   Step 8

After installing Notepad on your Mac, click Finish to start the program.

   Step 9

When the Notepad program is opened, you can check the version from the ? / About section of the tool menu.

   Step 10

If you want to run the Windows program again on your PC later, open the terminal and execute the “wine start ProgramName.exe” command.

wine start notepad++.exe

How to Uninstall Wine

If you don’t want to use Wine-Crossover anymore or if you plan to use another paid program, it is recommended to completely remove this software from your system.

   Step 1

Open Applications and right-click on Wine Crossover, then click Move to Trash. Do not forget to empty the trash after deleting the program.

   Step 2

Open the terminal and execute the “brew uninstall gcenx/wine/wine-crossover” command to unlink Wine-Crossover related paths.

brew uninstall gcenx/wine/wine-crossover

   Step 3

If you no longer need the Homebrew application, you can also choose to uninstall it. To uninstall Homebrew, execute the command below in the terminal and answer the question with Y.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall.sh)"

   Step 4

Finally, to delete unnecessary directories and files on your system related to Wine, find them with the “mdfind Wine” command and delete them with the “sudo rm -rf” command.

sudo rm -rf '/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/gcenx/'
sudo rm -rf '/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/homebrew'

   Video

Installing WineBottler on Old Version macOS

1. To extract the Wine-for-Mac.zip file, double-click on it and wait while the zip file expands.
2. To run Wine, double-click on the program and close Winetricks and General Preferences.
3. Click the Add button on Wine – Change Prefix.
4. Type a Folder Name for the Windows programs or games you will install on your computer, and then specify its Location. Click the Save button to save the settings.
5. Wait while the Prefix is being created and then click OK after the Prefix successfully completed.
6. To test Wine, download the Windows application and double-click the setup file, then click the Go button when the Wine program opens automatically.
7. When the installation wizard of the Windows application opens, install the program.

Installing Old Versions

macOS Version

YouTube Video

Slide

   Related Articles

♦ How to Configure PlayOnMac
♦ How to Install EXE on Ubuntu
♦ How to Install PlayOnLinux
♦ How to Install macOS with VirtualBox
♦ How to Install macOS with VMware

Does Wine still work on Mac?

Why can't I open Wine on my Mac?