Wine & CrossOver Office: Run Windows Apps On Your Mac Wine & CrossOver Office: Run Windows Apps On Your Mac

There are several ways to run Windows applications on Mac. Firstly, you can acquire official Windows licenses and set up the full Windows operating system. But it's quite expensive and it occupies too much space on your hard drive.

Secondly, you can try out Windows emulators and use such virtualization apps as VMWare or Parallels. However, it's so resource intensive and it takes up a lot of precious space on your computer as well. 

Luckily, there are two more decent ways to run your Windows apps as native macOS tools even on modest Macs with a limited amount of RAM. Read this article and find out the easiest and most affordable tricks that allow you to use your favourite Windows applications on your Mac. 

Wine

Play favourite games with WinePlay favourite games with Wine

You can pay attention to the compatibility layer tool called Wine. It enables you to integrate Windows apps into your desktop by simultaneously translating Windows API calls into POSIX ones.

The name is an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator" and it neither slows down your Mac performance nor takes up so much RAM.

Sadly, it isn't designed for common users and it requires some expert knowledge.

CrossOver Office

Set up Windows appsSet up Windows apps

That's a much user-friendlier way to access Windows apps from Macs. CrossOver Office is Wine's commercial project for cross-platform compatibility. You can purchase it for $49.95 a year. Still, it offers a 14-day trial so you have time to check out if it works for you. 

That's great that there's no need to buy extra licenses or perform dual-boot. But the decisive advantage of using this app is that it provides a big software library and ready-made profiles for popular Windows games and applications. 

Apply the default search tool, update the application list, choose the tools you want to install, and set them up with a few clicks.

Take into account that CrossOver works best with older versions of Microsoft Office.

Enjoy using Windows games and apps on your Mac.

Referenced Mac applications

DOSBox
FREE
rating

DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms.

PlayOnMac
FREE
rating

PlayOnMac allows you to install and run Windows apps on your Mac.

Snes9x
FREE
rating

Snes9x is a Super Nintendo emulator for a variety of platforms.

Author's other posts

macOS 13 Ventura: all the key features at hand
Article
macOS 13 Ventura: all the key features at hand
Meet Apple's next-generation operating system and get more out of your Mac.
Is MacBook Pro 2022 with M2 On The Way?
News
Is MacBook Pro 2022 with M2 On The Way?
We hardly know anything about a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, but recent leaks state that it's due for a release this autumn.
Top Features of macOS 13 We Expect To See At WWDC
News
Top Features of macOS 13 We Expect To See At WWDC
Possibly, Apple will introduce new macOS 13 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Which features are expected?
Back Up Your Mac And Keep Your Data Safe
Article
Back Up Your Mac And Keep Your Data Safe
Check out the best macOS apps that allow you to create backups of the info stored on your Mac and protect files from cyberattacks and avoid data loss.