The Mac OS vs Windows argument is a long continuing war between home users, professionals and geeks alike. Maybe you have recently decided to jump ship, over to Apple’s Mac OS. It is understandable that a major paradigm shift, such as from Microsoft’s Windows to Apple’s Mac OS brings with it a lot of complexity and habitual changes in our usage pattern.
One of the major pain points people worry about is Apps. Will their existing apps work on Mac, or do they need to find alternative applications for their use? It won’t be unfair to say that change is not always a good thing, so often, sticking to the apps they are used to, is better for productivity.
Your Mac can have as little as 64GB of free storage space, but at least 128GB of free storage space provides the best experience. Automatic Windows updates require that much space or more. If you have an iMac Pro or Mac Pro with 128GB of memory (RAM) or more, your startup disk needs at least as much free storage space as your Mac has memory. There are several applications that will let you run Windows on a Mac so you can use Windows programs on your computer. Some of them are for free, while some comes with a cost. Q is an emulator that lets you create a virtual machine to run Windows applications on your Mac computer. You could run the software on a Virtual Machine running MacOS. If you can find a Virtual Machine image that someone else has already put together, it would just be a.
Mac OS by itself has a thriving software ecosystem and great developer support, but some applications still only support Windows. Be it games, or professional software, rest assured, because today, we are going to discuss methods to run Windows apps on Mac OS.
How to Run Windows Apps on Mac
Table of Contents
1. Virtual Machine
In simple words, a Virtual Machine or VM is an emulation of a computer OS. They provide the full functionality of the virtualized OS, while actually running on top of your primary OS.
Virtual Machine is one of the easiest methods to run Windows desktop applications and games on a Mac OS computer. The virtualized Windows OS will think the apps are running on a real computer, while in reality, it is running on a virtualization software on your Mac.
So, what do you need to get started?
- A Virtualization Software: There are both paid and free alternatives, like Oracle VM VirtualBox (Free), VMWare Fusion (Paid), Parallels Desktop (Paid). Out of these three, we recommend Parallels Desktop. It supports full Direct3D acceleration, and general emulation performance is the best in the business.
- A copy of Windows: Since a virtualized OS is basically a full copy of Windows, we need a Windows ISO and a license key for activation. Microsoft Windows can be purchased from Microsoft’s website or via third-party retailers.
After procuring the required software and Windows installer, setting up a VM is surprisingly easy. We install the OS as we do on any normal computer, and that’s it. Now, any Windows application can be installed on top and ran without any issues.
Modern VM software has come a long way in allowing users to use their software seamlessly. For example, Parallels Desktop supports opening Windows Applications in a native window, outside of the OS itself. It also supports mapping disk drives from your Mac to your virtual operating system. This improves the user experience and is easy to use as well. You can treat your virtualized applications with the same ease as your native applications.
There is one major downside to running Windows OS as a virtual machine. Since the resources like CPU and GPU are emulated inside the virtual operating system, the pure performance, especially graphics performance is not very good. While older games and lighter GPU tasks will be absolutely fine, any modern games or heavy apps like Adobe Photoshop will bog down the system.
That’s where the next option comes into play, running Windows natively via Apple Boot Camp Assistant.
2. Install Windows via Apple Boot Camp
Apple provides a piece of software called Boot Camp Assistant with every Mac OS based computer. Boot Camp is basically utility allowing users to dual-boot Microsoft Windows alongside Mac OS. It contains the whole bevy of drivers and software required to support the hardware of your computer.
Installing Windows as a real operating system is a fairly easy process. The Boot Camp Assistant takes all the hassle of actually installing the operating system, and allows the user to choose how much disk space they want to allocate and which Operating System they want to boot as primary. The only requirement for this method is that you must have a copy of Windows ISO file and a license key for activating Windows. You can procure a license from Microsoft’s website or via third-party retailers.
The main benefit of installing Windows via Boot Camp is the performance. Since Windows is running natively, CPU and graphics performance will be equivalent to any proper Windows computer with the same specifications. This is the absolute best idea when your requirement is to run heavy-duty business applications or proper 3D games.
The downside to this method is that you cannot use both Windows and Mac OS at the same time. As with any multi-boot system, only one OS is running at a time, so you have to choose. Whenever you want to use some other applications in the other operating system, you have to reboot your laptop.
3. Emulating Software via Wine
Wine (backronym for Wine is Not an Emulator) is an open source compatibility layer which aims to allow software developed for Microsoft Windows to run on UNIX like operating systems. Wine supports Linux, Mac OS, BSD and Solaris Operating Systems.
Wine was initially developed with Linux in mind, but eventually, it was ported over to Mac OS. There are other compatibility layers built on top of Wine, such as PlayOnLinux and CrossOver for Mac. It allows users to directly run Windows apps on Mac OS.
Wine emulates the Windows environment by translating the system calls from the emulated application into standard UNIX like system calls. The application thinks it is running on Windows and passing commands like it would do on Windows. Wine acts as the middleman and facilitates the process. It can translate system calls in real time, thus eliminating the performance penalties with true emulation like Virtual Machines.
Installing Wine is fairly simple. You can download the app from WineHQ’s official website and install it as you would any other app. Then, you can simply run .exe files from your file manager (or ‘Finder’ as Apple likes to call it) by double-clicking it. There are also packages like CrossOver and WineBottler, which can automate the process for you, and resolve any dependencies that might be missing.
One of the major benefits of Wine is since it does not actually use the Windows operating system, you are not needed to buy a license key. Thus, it is actually a fully free method of getting your software on Mac. However, not all programs play nice with Wine. Wine’s website has a comprehensive list of compatibility with various common applications.
Wine is mostly a workaround solution if your needs are not too demanding. The solution isn’t fully perfect, still, we suggest you check it out, before making your final choice.
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4. Find Alternative Applications for Mac OS
This is not so much of a tutorial to get your Windows applications on Mac OS, but rather, one of the straightforward solutions. Instead of depending on tips, tricks and hacks to get your software to run on Mac OS, the easiest solution is to migrate to native Mac OS apps.
Unlike what you might be thinking, a lot of common applications exist for Mac as well. These include software like:
- Microsoft Office
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Google Chrome
- VLC Media Player
- Mozilla Firefox
- WinZIP
- Steam
- Skype
- FileZilla
- Dropbox
- uTorrent
What’s even better, is that your app purchases and subscriptions like Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office 365 and Game purchases inside Steam are perfectly valid in both Windows and Mac.
If you are new to the Mac OS, it is a worthy consideration to research the world of Mac OS applications first. Who knows, you might find that the software you were looking for is already available on Mac OS.
Conclusion – How to Run Windows Apps on Mac
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Whether we are computer purists, or simple users, switching to a new operating system doesn’t have to be a panic situation. Applications and Programs are the backbones of our computer usage, and switching to Apple’s Mac OS is certainly not a compromise with the user experience we get. Be it alternative software, or using the same applications we are familiarized with, there is always a solution.
All these tips and tricks are obviously more hard work than simply installing a software on a Windows PC. If you have a Mac or are planning to switch to Mac OS, we recommend you focus on using Mac OS software as much as possible. There’s a lot to learn in a new operating system, and we hope you enjoy your new operating system as much as we did helping you master your technology.
For everything else, that’s where this guide comes in! Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.
When you install Microsoft Windows on your Mac, Boot Camp Assistant automatically opens the Boot Camp installer, which installs the latest Windows support software (drivers). If that doesn't happen, or you experience any of the following issues while using Windows on your Mac, follow the steps in this article.
- Your Apple mouse, trackpad, or keyboard isn't working in Windows.
Force Touch isn't designed to work in Windows. - You don't hear audio from the built-in speakers of your Mac in Windows.
- The built-in microphone or camera of your Mac isn't recognized in Windows.
- One or more screen resolutions are unavailable for your display in Windows.
- You can't adjust the brightness of your built-in display in Windows.
- You have issues with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi in Windows.
- You get an alert that Apple Software Update has stopped working.
- You get a message that your PC has a driver or service that isn't ready for this version of Windows.
- Your Mac starts up to a black or blue screen after you install Windows.
If your Mac has an AMD video card and is having graphics issues in Windows, you might need to update your AMD graphics drivers instead.
Install the latest macOS updates
Before proceeding, install the latest macOS updates, which can include updates to Boot Camp.
Format a USB flash drive
To install the latest Windows support software, you need a 16GB or larger USB flash drive formatted as MS-DOS (FAT).
- Start your Mac from macOS.
- Plug the USB flash drive into your Mac.
- Open Disk Utility, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- Choose View > Show All Devices from the menu bar.
- From the sidebar in Disk Utility, select your USB flash drive. (Select the drive name, not the volume name beneath it.)
- Click the Erase button or tab.
- Choose MS-DOS (FAT) as the format and Master Boot Record as the scheme.
- Click Erase to format the drive. When done, quit Disk Utility.
Download the Windows support software
After preparing your USB flash drive, complete these steps:
- Make sure that your Mac is connected to the Internet.
- Open Boot Camp Assistant, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- From the menu bar at the top of your screen, choose Action > Download Windows Support Software, then choose your USB flash drive as the save destination. When the download completes, quit Boot Camp Assistant.
Learn what to do if you can't download or save the Windows support software.
Install the Windows support software
After downloading the Windows support software to your flash drive, follow these steps to install the software. (If you're attempting to resolve issues with a Bluetooth mouse or keyboard, it might be easier to use a USB mouse or keyboard until these steps are complete.)
- Make sure that the USB flash drive is plugged into your Mac.
- Start up your Mac in Windows.
- From File Explorer, open the USB flash drive, then open Setup or setup.exe, which is in the WindowsSupport folder or BootCamp folder. When you're asked to allow Boot Camp to make changes to your device, click Yes.
- Click Repair to begin installation. If you get an alert that the software hasn't passed Windows Logo testing, click Continue Anyway.
- After installation completes, click Finish, then click Yes when you're asked to restart your Mac.
Learn more
Windows For Mac Free Download
If you can't download or save the Windows support software:
- If the assistant says that the Windows support software could not be saved to the selected drive, or that the USB flash drive can't be used, make sure that your USB flash drive has a storage capacity of at least 16GB and is formatted correctly.
- If the assistant doesn't see your USB flash drive, click Go Back and make sure that the drive is connected directly to the USB port on your Mac—not to a display, hub, or keyboard. Disconnect and reconnect the drive, then click Continue.
- If the assistant says that it can't download the software because of a network problem, make sure that your Mac is connected to the Internet.
- Make sure that your Mac meets the system requirements to install Windows using Boot Camp.
Running Windows Programs On Mac
If a Mac feature still doesn't work after updating the Windows support software, search for your symptom on the Apple support website or Microsoft support website. Some features of your Mac aren't designed to work in Windows.