How to Play Windows Games on Mac Using Whiskey

Strong> from the menu bar at the top of the display.

To install the WhiskyCmd CLI tool, select Whisky->Install Whisky CLI from the Whisky menu. The tool is installed automatically, without confirmation.

Creating Bottles

To create a new bottle for a Win32 application, click the + Create Bottle button.

By clicking + Create bottle, specify a name for the bottle, specify the version of Windows in which the application should run, and where the resulting bottle will be stored on disk. The default location is ~/Library/Containers/Whisky/Bottles.

Bottles may contain more than one game or application. Whiskey currently supports Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10.

Enter the bottle name and Windows version.

After creating a bottle, all bottles are listed on the left side of the Whiskey main window. When you select any bottle on the left, information about it is displayed in the panel on the right.

If you click the Browse button on a new bottle sheet, Whiskey will create a new folder in the selected location.

Inside the folder there are many files, the most important of which is “drive_c”. Here, Windows programs are stored as if they were on the C: drive of the computer.

Drive_c mimics the file system structure of a PC with folders such as “Program Files” and “Program Files (x86)”.

Next, you need to move all the Win32 .exe applications that Whiskey and GPTK will use to the “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)” folder on drive_c. This is the area of ​​.exe applications where Windows expects them at startup.

To add a Win32 Windows application to a bottle, first select the bottle from the list on the left, then click the Pin Program button. Give your Pin a name and click the Browse button.

Add .exe files by clicking the Pin a Program button.

Using the standard open worksheet, select the Win32 application you placed in Program Files , or “Program Files (x86)” on drive_c to use it by clicking the Browse buttonnext to “Path to program:”. The Wine website has a complete list of supported Win32 games.

If the Win32 app you want to run in GPTK uses an installer, you'll need to copy the entire Win32 install folder to drive_c and then run the installer from there, then install the actual Win32 game you want to run.

If you want to use a Win32 game that is on a CD and uses an installer, you will need to first copy the entire contents of the CD to drive_c and then mount it there.

It is possible to zip an .exe or Win32 installation from a CD if you have a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive connected to your Mac, but for reliability reasons this is probably not a good option. idea.

Some older Win32 games on the CD contain installation files, some contain nothing but a single .exe file and an .ini file that automatically launches the .exe when you insert the CD into the computer. .

Iso image file on CD.

You can try to build non-game Win32 applications, but your compatibility result may vary – since most supported games use 3D APIs such as OpenGL, Vulkan, and Microsoft DirectX and Direct3D.

After clicking the Browsebutton on the Open sheet, navigate to the .exe file you want to pin, then click the Open button.

When you do this, the pinning program sheet will show the default output name and the path to the .exe file. Now click the Pin button.

Select the .exe file to pin.

We found one small glitch in Whisky: when you pin your first program, it doesn't immediately appear in the top parts of the rightmost panel. You need to click the Update button for it to appear in the list.

Main window with a docked application.

You can continue to pin other .exe applications using the Pin Program button.

To create another bottle, click the +» button in the upper right corner of the main window to repeat the process.

Bottles are cool because you can create as many of them as you want and then configure each one separately with different runtime configurations.

Viewing installed bottles and configurations

Under the program Pin Button consists of two lines: Installed programs and Bottle configuration.

If you click Installed programs, you will get a list of all installed .exe applications.

You can hover over any app in the list to pin or unpin it, change its settings, or click the Play buttonto launch it. The hover controls also indicate whether the given .exe is 32-bit or not.

Installed Program panel.

If you click the Bottle Configuration button instead, you will get a list of Wine settings for the selected bottle. Here you can view information and set options such as Windows version, Retina mode, scaling, and Metal and DXVK options.

DXVK is the Vulkan translation layer for Direct3D versions 9 through 11 on Linux for use with Wine.

The Bottle Configuration panel also has buttons for Wine Configuration, opening the Windows Registry Editor, and opening the Wine Control Panel.

This is very cool because if you click the Open Wine Configuration or Open Registry Editor buttons, you will see that these applications will open in Win32 windows instantly. just as if they ran natively on Windows, but right on your Mac desktop:

Win32 apps running on macOS.

A few other tools

There are a few more menu options in Whisky that you should know about:

From the File menu, use the Import Bottle menu command to import existing bottles without having to go through the entire setup process again for each application.

Also in the File menu there is an item Open log folder.menu (Command-L), which is located in ~/Library.Logs/com.isaacmarovitz .Whiskey. You can view all Whiskey magazines in text format here.

File->Kill All Bottles kills all running Win32 applications stored in Bottles, but leaves them intact in the main window.

There is also a menu item File->Clear Shader Cacheswhich clears all shared caches from previous application launches.

There are a few more buttons at the bottom of the main Whiskey window: one for opening the c_drive folder directly in the Finder, one for running Winetricks (short utilities for Wine), and a button labeled simply Run, which allows you to run an .exe file without first pinning it.

Running Win32 applications

Finally, after completing the setup and pinning of applications, it's time to launch one of them. To do this, simply double-click its icon at the top of the main Whiskey window.

If this is your first Wine application, it may take a while to launch, so be patient.

Keep in mind that when you run an app in Whisky/GPTK, you're not running an emulator: Win32 apps run as separate apps, just like you would run any Mac app. Wine does all the magic of translating Win32 API calls to POSIX, which translates into native APIs on the Mac.

In most cases this happens without problems.

Win32 application running on macOS Sonoma.

Design and documentation

Whisky is a great app, despite a few minor bugs. Marowitz took time to think things through.

The application is simple and elegant. It is easy to use and you will have no problem quickly searching and finding everything you need.

Mastering the Whiskey user interface takes just a few minutes. Nice little keyboard shortcuts, like buttons to open folders or close all running Win32 applications, save time.

In terms of configuration and installation, Whiskey significantly advances the GPTK installation process compared to previous configuration solutions. Whiskey requires no manual setup – just click Next and everything will be installed in one step – even Rosetta if you don't have it.

Also of note is the Whiskey website itself. In the age of information overload, the site is clean, minimalistic, simple, and concise—something that most other websites could learn from.

For a quick guide to whiskey, click the little note icon in the top right corner of the Whiskey home page. You'll be taken to the Whiskey documentation, which includes six sections in total, including a tutorial, common issues, using WhiskyCmd's game support, and a discussion of how Whiskey compares to the similar CrossOver app from CodeWeavers.

Whisky doesn't do everything CrossOver does. But Whiskey is free and much simpler and easier to set up and use.

Any retro gaming enthusiast will want to add Whiskey to their classic gaming collection.

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