Want to Play Windows Games on Your Mac? You Need This App

howtogeek.com:

Apple fans have long yearned to call Mac their gaming platform of choice, but the number of games only available on Windows continues to be a problem. There's a way to bridge that gap, though, with an open source and user-friendly app called Whisky.

Why Whisky Is Great for Mac Gamers

Thanks to the introduction of Apple Silicon processors, with impressive clock speeds and a built-in GPU, the performance of high-end games on Mac is impressive. Plus, with Sonoma’s Game Mode feature, the future is bright for Mac gaming.

Despite this, there's still the lingering issue of developer support. While Mac gaming is being taken more seriously, ports for PC games are still few and far between, meaning emulation is a popular solution. It’s for this reason that Whisky, a fork of the popular Wine emulator, is worth checking out. It lets you emulate Windows games, including top-tier ones like Hogwarts Legacy and Horizon Zero Dawn.

Whisky has a terminal-free setup, a speedy and accessible interface, and the ability to create emulation profiles and presets. We’ll show you how to install Whisky and how to best use it to emulate Windows games.

How to Install Whisky

To install Whisky, you must have an Apple Silicon chip (M1, M2, or M3) and macOS Sonoma (version 14.0 or later).

To download Whisky, grab the latest version at the Whisky website.

Or, if you have package manager Homebrew, you can grab it directly through Terminal using this command: brew install --cask whisky

How to Create a Bottle in Whisky

Once installed, open Whisky and it will ask you to create your first bottle. Bottles are a feature that differentiate Whisky from other Windows emulators. They are contained profiles which you can attach a game or application to and then configure individually—beneficial when presets and settings work well for one game, but not for another.

To begin, click "Create Bottle." Give the bottle a name, select the version of Windows, and the file path where you want the