What Is PlayOnMac, and How Does It Work?
PlayOnMac is an application for macOS that allows you to play Windows games through the use of software called Wine. Unlike other methods of running Windows software, Wine doesn’t emulate Windows itself. Instead, Wine is a software compatibility layer that acts as a sort of translator between Windows software and non-Windows operating systems like macOS.
Because PlayOnMac uses a compatibility layer, not an emulator, it takes much less power to accomplish what it does. So, if you’re hoping to run a high-fidelity video game, you’ll have a much easier time getting it to run on your hardware.
Having said that, there is a slight downside to this method. Not every game or piece of software will actually work with a compatibility layer because some software is too hard to translate. Emulation takes much more power but tends to have a larger compatibility base because it doesn’t need to translate anything between systems in the way compatibility layers do.
Getting Your Device Ready for PlayOnMac
The first thing you’ll need to do is download and install the software, but depending on your installation of macOS, that could be a little complicated. Please bear in mind that when you’re changing security settings on your Mac you could end up installing something dangerous that harms your machine. Follow these steps at your own risk.
First up, you need to head to system preferences, then click on Security and Privacy. Depending on what version of macOS you’re using, you’ll now see a few different things. Under the General tab, you should see an area headed Allow Apps Downloaded From. In versions of macOS before Sierra (10.12) you’ll automatically see an option for ‘Anywhere’. If you enable this option, then you’re ready to go.
If you’re using Sierra or later, then you’ll need to use Terminal to disable software gatekeeping. Open up a new terminal window and type the following:
You should now find that it enables apps from all locations on your system. There are also a few other pre-requisites that we need to take care of before we can use PlayOnMac. The easiest way to handle them is to install an application called Homebrew.
Open a new Terminal window and type the following:
This will install Homebrew onto your system. This application specializes in installing third-party packages onto your macOS Terminal. Once the installation resolves, we can use it to install Wine and XQuartz, which are two things that PlayOnMac needs to function.
Type both of the following into Terminal to install Wine and XQuartz:
Both of these processes could take a little while, but once they’re done you can close Terminal and start the fun part.
How to Install PlayOnMac
Now we need to download and install PlayOnMac itself. Go to the PlayOnMac download page and download the application for your version of macOS. If you’re running 10.14 or earlier, you’ll need PlayOnMac 4.3.3, anything newer requires version 4.4.3. If you’re not sure which version of macOS you’re running, click the Apple logo in the top left of your screen and then select About This Mac. This will present you with your version number and name.
With the installer downloaded, it’s simply a case of mounting the .dmg file, then copying the PlayOnMac application to your applications folder. Once that’s done, boot the program, and it should present you with a new PlayOnMac window. There are a few different things we need to do now to install Windows games on macOS.
First, click Tools > Manage Wine Versions, and wait a moment for the version list to load. Select the latest non-RC and non-staging version of Wine, and click the right-facing arrow to install that version. You’ll need to do this for both x86 and amd64 versions of Wine to be safe. If you’re using a Mac that was made before 2012, you’ll need to install version 5.0 of Wine in both x86 and amd64, as newer versions require Metal support that your hardware won’t have.
Getting Steam Running With PlayOnMac
One of the biggest things you’ll need to do if you want a proper gaming experience on your Mac is to install Steam. While there is a built-in way of installing Steam, by default it’ll be installed onto a 32-bit drive and you won’t be able to run a lot of games. Instead, we can take a few extra steps to make 64-bit games work correctly.
On the main PlayOnMac window, select configure, then click New on the bottom right of your screen. Click Next in the PlayOnMac Wizard and then select 64 bits windows installation before clicking Next again. Select your preferred version of Wine, then hit Next again. Name your drive something appropriate and click Next one more time. Now PlayOnMac should boot Wine and use it to create a new virtual drive for you to install games and applications onto.
Once everything finishes, select your new virtual drive on the left of your configuration window, and then select the Install components heading. Select Microsoft Core Fonts, hit Install, and then follow through the wizard to install some fonts that Steam needs.
Now you have two options to get Steam installed. Firstly, you can install Steam directly from the Install components menu as you did with the core fonts. However, this does sometimes result in an MD5 error. If this happens to you, download the regular Steam installed exe, go to Miscellaneous and click Run a Windows Executable (.exe) file in this virtual drive. Now just select the Steam installer you downloaded and run it like you normally would.
The final step if you use the manual installation method is to go to General on your drive and select Make a new shortcut from this virtual drive. Then select steam.exe, hit Next, name the shortcut, and hit Next one last time. Once that’s done, hit Cancel to finish.
Installing Steam Games With PlayOnMac
There are one or two final important things you’ll need to do to get games installed. First, if you encounter a steamwebhelper.exe error that keeps popping up, go back to Install components and install HackSteam. You can safely ignore any other errors like VulcanDriver by clicking cancel or closing the window when it comes up. This shouldn’t stop you from using the service.
You may notice that Steam has a black screen when you load into it. The easiest way to fix this is to go to View > Small Mode and the window will reduce down to just your game list. This removes some of Steam’s functionality, but it makes it possible to install Windows Steam games on your Mac.
At this point, you can just install games like you would on a Windows PC. Be aware that not all your games will work by default, but a large amount of them should work if you have a Mac with enough performance to handle it. If you want to launch your Steam games directly from the PlayOnMac menu, you can use the Make a new shortcut from this virtual drive option in the configuration menu to add it to the main PlayOnMac window.
A New World of Windows Games on Mac With PlayOnMac
If you’ve followed these instructions to the letter you should now find a whole new world of Windows games opening up before you. Combined with the pretty sizable world of modern Mac gaming, you’re going to have a lot of new games to try out.
