The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

Oct 29, 2019 CrossOver Mac. CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making its own Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is basically Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Let us know in the comment below!

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

C.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July

There are four Fishing Tourneys each year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Here's when they are and what the rules are for participating.

Mac OS X has limited support for playing games , thus the support for Game controllers i.e Gamepad & joysticks is limited too. But you may want to connect your PS2/PS3 or Xbox 360 gamepad / joystick controller to Play games on Mac for playing games or performing mouse or keyboard actions. Here are the Top 3 Best Free Gamepad / Joystick controller app software for Mac OS X which let you play any game via your Joystick or gamepad even if the game doesn’t support it.

Gamepad / Joystick Controller App # 1 – Enjoyable

Enjoyable can be classified as the Best Gamepad or Joystick mapper for Mac OS X . Its so good that its even better than the paid ones.

Enjoyable lets you use your any game controller (Wii Mote, PS2 / PS3 / xBox controller) on Mac OS X by mapping keyboard keystrokes & mouse movements to your Joystick.

Thus, you can easily simulate keyboard keypresses & mouse-movements directly via your gamepad, to play virtually any game using your joystick on Mac OS , even if the game doesn’t support Joystick input.

Incase, if you need to know how exactly does Enjoyable work – You can check the Enjoyable configuration tutorial for Gamepad here

Gamepad Controller App # 2 – USB Overdrive

USB Overdrive is yet another good app to control & map any external usb device to Mac OS X, and not just gamepads & joystick controllers.

USB Overdrive is thus an ideal alternative for Xpadder for Mac OS X, and thus can be used to connect your Bluetooth PS4 Controller as well.

Plus, the best thing is that USB Overdrive is actively developed & supported and is compatible with all Mac OS X variants such as Mavericks, Yosemite, Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, El Capitan and even Mac OS Sierra too.

Joystick Controller App # 3 – Enjoy2

Enjoy2 is an alternative to Enjoyable for Mac OS C and is fairly good & capable as well.

Its perhaps more easier to use than Enjoyable & USB Overdrive and is very user friendly.

Plus it also supports pre-loaded configurations so that you don’t need to configure & map each button & analog of your joystick to keyboard/ mouse input.

The app too is actively developed & works on all Mac os x Variants.

Thus, these are the Best Top 3 free gamepad / joystick controllers for Mac OS X, incase if you now any other good app or have some query feel free to comment.