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 designed only for Microsoft Windows systems.
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 wish 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. 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 correctly. 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 the 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 32-bit applications, you can use the “WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg” command to create 32 32-bit prefixes manually.
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg
Step 4
While installing Wine-Crossover, the gatekeeper will be disabled so the applications you install 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++, an excellent 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 program’s installation location. Click Next to continue installing the program at 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 rerun the Windows program on your PC later, open the terminal and execute the “wine start ProgramName.exe” command.
wine start notepad++.exe
How to Uninstall Wine from macOS on a Mac PC
If you don’t want to use Wine-Crossover anymore or if you plan to use another paid program, it is recommended that you remove this software from your system altogether.
Step 1
Open Applications, right-click on Wine Crossover, and 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 related to Wine on your system, 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 the Old Version of macOS
- To extract the Wine-for-Mac.zip file, double-click on it and wait while the zip file expands.
- To run Wine, double-click on the program and close Winetricks and General Preferences.
- Click the Add button on Wine – Change Prefix.
- Type a folder name for the Windows programs or games you will install on your computer, and then specify their location. Click the Save button to save the settings.
- Wait while the Prefix is being created, and then click OK after the Prefix is completed.
- To test Wine, download the Windows application and double-click the setup file, then click the Go button when the Wine program opens automatically.
- When the installation wizard of the Windows application opens, install the program.
Installing Old Versions
Is it compatible with Mac Mojave 10.14 tho . cause I tried to use app PKHEX and the scroll and move function didn’t work and it crashed …..
The version of WINE compiled by gcenx from the open-source Crossover code is for MacOS 10.15 Catalina and later, it will not work on MacOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier. If you are running MacOS 10.14 Mojave, you should use gcenx’s modified version of the latest wine-stable which addresses a bug in the version of wine-stable currently being distributed. You can install gcenx’s version by running this Terminal command after installing Homebrew:
brew install –cask –no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wine-stable-legacy
Hi, when I click on the Download software link I get the following error message.
Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist.
Please advise. Much thanks
Hey, when installing wine-crossover, you need to use the command “brew install –cask –no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wine-crossover” now. Just thought you’d like to know
It’s very useful! After I installed wine-crossover, I tried to run some exe. apps on it. But there’s an issue, how to install other languages on wine-crossover?
After using the command “brew install –no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wine-crossover” I get a message “command not found; brew”
Any ideas to get past this?
never mind, I figured it out.
How did you solve it?
I got the same message and
I noticed that I had this message when I re installed it to start all over again
HEAD is now at 518fb4311 Merge pull request #15656 from osalbahr/silverbrew
Warning: /opt/homebrew/bin is not in your PATH.
Instructions on how to configure your shell for Homebrew
can be found in the ‘Next steps’ section below.
==> Installation successful!