In this article I will show you how to get Windows programs running on your Mac for free. Even on Macs with Apple silicon. I will use TINA-TI (a free circuit simulator by Texas Instruments) as an example but this approach will work with other Windows applications as well.
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Running Windows Programs on a Mac
Running Windows programs on a Mac has always been a bit of a challenge. Virtualization software such as vmWare Fusion, Parallels, and the free VirtualBox has made it easier, but now with Apple's own CPUs, running PC applications on a Mac has become a bit more difficult. I recently installed vmWare and Windows 11 ARM on my MacBook Pro M2 only to find that the program I wanted to run, TINA-TI (a free, Windows-only circuit simulator), would not run on Windows 11 ARM, which led me to explore other options.
Installing Windows Programs on Mac with Wineskin Winery
The image below shows the end result: TINA-TI, a free circuit simulator by Texas Instruments, running on a MacBook Pro M2 with OSX Sonoma (14.2.1).
Wine is a tool that allows for Windows programs to run under linux. Since Apple's operating system (Mac OS X - or now macOS), colloquially speaking, is a user-friendly version of linux with a nice window manager, Wine can be used to make Windows programs run on a Mac.
Wine relies on various 'engines' or interpreters if you will. These are managed by Wineskin, and the first step in the process of making TINA-TI run on Mac is, thus, to install Wineskin.
Downloading and Installing Wineskin
Start by downloading Wineskin from its Github page: https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer?tab=readme-ov-file
You will find the download link about halfway down the page:
I missed the note about removing the quarantine flag and not extracting using Keka (a third-party file compression/archiving tool for Mac). I simply double-clicked the downloaded file to extract it and double-clicked on the extracted file to start the Wineskin Winery app.
Installing a Wineskin Engine
The next step is to install a Wineskin Engine. This is done by clicking the [+] button in the Wineskin Winery.
As you can see, I installed the WS11WineCX64Bit23.7.1_D3DMetal-v1.1 engine.
I'm not sure what the differences between the various engines are, but I suppose the engines differ in the Windows features they offer. It also appears that the engine I chose supports Apple's Metal API for hardware graphics acceleration.
Create an Blank .app Wrapper
The wrapper contains the infrastructure needed to translate the Windows API calls from the Windows application to the corresponding macOS API calls. A blank wrapper .app file is needed to start this process: Click the blue Create New Blank Wrapper button.
In the window that opens you will be prompted to name your new app. Type in the desired name and click OK.
The wrapper creation process takes about a minute and culminates with this message:
Click View Wrapper in Finder to find the resulting wrapper file. You can also locate the .app file in the ~/Applications/Wineskin directory.
Installing the Windows App Within the Mac .app Wrapper
Now would be a good time to download or otherwise locate the Windows program that you are trying to install on your Mac. In case of TINA-TI, you will need to download the Windows installer from TI's website:
https://www.ti.com/tool/TINA-TI
Extract the .zip file that contains the installer executable.
Double-click the empty wrapper app that you created in the previous step. That brings you to this window:
Click the top button, Install Software. That gets you here:
Click the Choose Setup Executable button and point the installer to the installer.
Click the Choose button to start the installer. Then install the software as you would on Windows. After a successful installation you now have a Mac app that contains your Windows program. Copy the resulting app to the Applications folder for easy access.
You will likely have to grant permission for the application to access your Desktop, Documents, and Downloads folders a few times along the way. That's normal.
Launch the app. You will find the root directory of the system drive on your Mac mounted as Z:. If you need to access a network drive or USB drive from within Windows, mount the drive to your Mac and browse to Z:\Volumes within the Windows program. I find the file browser in the Windows app to be quite slow but it does work. That seems like a small price to pay to be able to run Windows programs on your Mac for free.
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