Unfortunately the following instructions to install Windows on a Mac without Boot Camp only work on Intel Macs.Īpple Silicon M1 and M2 Macs have advanced security protection that won’t allow you to boot from an external drive. Can You Install Windows on an M1 or M2 Mac Without Boot Camp?
You only have to buy an activation key for Windows 10 or Windows 11 if you want to remove a small watermark from them and customize them.
The other great thing is you can install Windows on a Mac for free nowadays. This also has the advantage that Windows does not take-up any of your hard drive space on your Mac’s hard drive as it’s all stored and run on an external drive. However, if you want to keep your Mac and Windows files truly separate or don’t have enough hard drive space on your Mac’s internal hard drive, then an even beter way to install Windows on a Mac is by using an external hard drive to run Windows. The best way to install Windows on a Mac is using a virtual machine such as Parallels which is easily the best alternative to Boot Camp. You can’t run them at simultaneously like you can with a virtual machine.Īnother big problem is that the latest M1 chip Macs do not support Boot Camp so you can’t install Windows on an M1 Mac with it.īoot Camp also requires a lot of hard drive space on your Mac to install and run Windows plus games or applications that you want to use with it. One of them is that you can only boot your Mac in Windows on macOS using Boot Camp. However, Boot Camp has quite a few disadvantages when it comes to installing and running Windows on a Mac. Until the release of Apple Silicon M1 Macs, Boot Camp was one of the most popular ways to install Windows on a Mac, especially for gaming.
How To Install Windows Without Boot Camp.Can You Install Windows on an M1 or M2 Mac Without Boot Camp?.It isn't quite as plug-and-play as OpenEmu-you'll need to do just a bit of that command-line work you did in the actual days of DOS-but for many games, it's pretty simple.
While OpenEmu focuses on classic game consoles, you can also emulate the DOS programs of yore with DOSBox (Opens in a new window). You can read our full guide to OpenEmu here, and if you want to emulate a system it doesn't support, check out our list of the best emulators for more options. Or click the Homebrew tab to find free, newly developed games for those classic systems. You'll have to grab a ROM file for any game you want to play-we'll leave it to you to find those-after which you can just drag them into OpenEMU's main window to add them to your game library. Install the program, select the systems you want to emulate, and you're off to the races. There are plenty of emulators for retro game consoles out there, but Mac users have it pretty easy with OpenEmu (Opens in a new window), which can put all your favorite retro games in one place. If you want to relive games from your youth, there's a good chance your favorite retro titles can be emulated on your Mac. Some may work better with certain games, so your best bet is to search for "the best way to get running on a Mac." To browse Wine-friendly games before you buy, check out the Wine Database (Opens in a new window) alongside Porting Kit's library to get a feel for what might work on your system. While Porting Kit is the easiest and most up-to-date tool for installing games with Wine, other programs aim to do something similar, like PlayOnMac (Opens in a new window) or the $60 CrossOver (Opens in a new window). Once you're able to get a game working the first time, it'll be easy to launch in the future, since the title appears in your Applications folder like any other Mac app.
It can still take a bit of fiddling, but Porting Kit has some built-in tutorials to help you out. Just search Porting Kit's app or website for a game, like Among Us (Opens in a new window), and it'll provide an Install Now button along with any quirks, patches, or extra steps you might need to take for smooth gameplay. Porting Kit (Opens in a new window) is usually my first go-to, since it attempts to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Wine itself can get rather technical to set up, especially when it comes to games, but there are a few third-party tools that make things easier.
Some Windows-only titles may run on macOS through Wine (Opens in a new window), a compatibility layer for Mac and Linux systems designed to run Windows programs. Okay, so you've exhausted all the Mac-compatible games in popular stores, and you're ready to tinker in order to get some other games running.