Whisky
The free app everyone loved is no longer maintained. When games break, nobody's fixing them.
Bourbon 26 Built for Apple Silicon
Windows games. On your Mac.
A native Mac app that installs Wine, DXVK, MoltenVK and Steam for you — then gets out of the way. One button. No Terminal.
Buy once · no subscription · Apple Silicon · macOS 14 Sonoma or later
The setup maze
Mac gaming shouldn't need
a computer science degree
Until now, running Windows games on a Mac meant picking your poison.
Apple GPTK
Powerful, but it's Terminal commands, Homebrew and manual configuration — built for porting engineers.
CrossOver
Genuinely good software, but renewals never stop — and it still won't set Steam up for you.
Parallels
Runs an entire copy of Windows: a subscription, a Windows licence, and a full VM's overhead.
Bourbon 26
Picks up where Whisky left off — and adds the thing the free tools never did: Steam, installed and working out of the box.
Set Up Everything
Complete
- Steam client ready to sign into
- Wine Staging 11 primary engine
- DXVK DirectX → Vulkan
- Game Porting Toolkit 3 D3DMetal
- DXMT DirectX 10/11 → Metal
- VKD3D DirectX 12 → Vulkan
- MoltenVK Vulkan → Metal
- CrossOver-source Wine 32-bit tools
- Steam UI shim fixes Steam rendering
- Game runtimes VC++ & DirectX helpers
- Wine prefix
- Rosetta 2
- Homebrew
- Core Windows fonts
One button
Click once.
Start playing.
Open Bourbon, glance at the Permissions panel, and press Set Up Everything. Fourteen components — both Wine runtimes, every graphics translation layer, the Steam client and its shim — installed and wired up in one pass while you watch the checkmarks land.
Nothing is hidden. Every component gets its own status row, so you can install, repair, update, disable or remove any single piece later without starting over.
Permission checks first
Per-component repair
Zero Terminal
What's inside
Everything the hard way
used to require
A real SwiftUI Mac app — not a Terminal script, not an Electron wrapper.
One-click setup
Rosetta 2, Homebrew, MoltenVK, Wine Staging 11, DXVK and Steam installed and configured in a single guided pass.
Steam, built in
Sign in, browse and download your own library exactly as you would on a PC. Install, launch, stop and repair Steam from inside the app.
The Bottle Shelf
Smart Play assigns every game a pre-baked runtime preset — DXVK, WineD3D, VKD3D, DXMT, GPTK or native macOS — so you never hand-tune a prefix.
Remote Play
Xbox Cloud, GeForce NOW, Amazon Luna and Boosteroid in clean native windows — plus Chiaki for PS4 and PS5 Remote Play, and Moonlight to stream from your own PC, Linux box or Mac. No Wine in the path at all.
Windows apps too
Download a .exe or .msi in Safari, then run it through Bourbon — or right-click in Finder and choose Open With → Bourbon.
External drives
Map mounted volumes into Wine drive letters so Steam can build libraries on external storage. Move the data folder whenever you like.
D3DMetal — GPTK 3 and 4
Apple's DirectX-to-Metal path, one click away. Bourbon installs and updates Game Porting Toolkit 3 through Homebrew, and can import Apple's experimental GPTK 4 beta DMG when you want to try it.
A dual-Wine stack
Two Wine runtimes side by side: Wine Staging 11 with DXVK for Steam and modern DirectX, plus a CrossOver-source build in its own prefix for fragile 32-bit Windows tools.
Blockers caught first
Before any long install, Bourbon checks admin access, Homebrew folder ownership, its own data folder and the Command Line Tools — and every failing row gets a fix button instead of a cryptic error.
Smart Play
Pick a bottle.
Or let Bourbon pour.
Each game is matched to a named runtime preset. Smart Play picks one automatically — you can always pour a different one.
Old Reliable
DXVK · 90 Proof
Most DirectX 9–11 & Vulkan games
Homegrown
Native · macOS
Mac-native Steam games
Heritage Reserve
WineD3D · Aged
Source & older DirectX 9 games
Double Barrel
VKD3D · 120
Modern DirectX 12 games
Cask Strength Metal
DXMT · Full Proof
DirectX 11 games that dislike DXVK
Orchard Reserve
D3DMetal · GPTK
DirectX 11/12 via Apple GPTK
Single Malt
DXVK · Neat
Non-Steam & installer games
Blended Toolworks
CrossOver · 32-bit
Fragile 32-bit Windows tools
0
Titles in the compatibility database
8
Runtime bottles on the shelf
$0
Renewals, ever
The tour
Have a look around
Every screen, shot on an Apple Silicon Mac. Click any one to open it full size.
How it compares
The honest table
| 🥃 Bourbon 26 | Whisky | Apple GPTK | CrossOver | Parallels | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $29.99 once | Free | Free | $74/yr · $494 life | $99.99/yr |
| No forced renewals | Yours to keep | — | — | Renewals | Subscription |
| Still maintained | Yes | Discontinued | Yes (dev tool) | Yes | Yes |
| No Terminal required | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Steam auto-installed | Yes | No | No | No | Runs full Windows |
| No Windows licence needed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Must buy Windows |
Competitor pricing as of June 2026: codeweavers.com, parallels.com.
No overselling
What works,
and what doesn't
Bourbon plays games you legally own. It never strips, cracks or bypasses DRM — and it won't pretend everything runs.
Usually great
Modern 64-bit single-player games, and Steamworks titles — you sign into the real Steam client, so they authenticate normally.
May need a tweak
Older games, unusual launchers and aggressive DRM. Pour a different bottle from the shelf and most of them come round.
Won't work
Kernel-level anti-cheat — BattlEye, Easy Anti-Cheat, Riot Vanguard. macOS cannot load Windows kernel drivers, and no app can change that.
Questions
Before you pour
No. Bourbon is not a virtual machine and does not require a Windows licence. It runs Windows games through compatibility and graphics translation layers directly on macOS.
No. Check the Permissions panel, click Set Up Everything, and Bourbon installs the required stack. If Homebrew or a macOS permission is wrong, it shows a fix button rather than a cryptic error.
Yes. You sign into your own Steam account and download your own library. Bourbon never touches your ownership.
Many modern 64-bit single-player and Steamworks games run well. Anything with kernel-level anti-cheat generally will not. Look up a specific title on the compatibility page before you buy.
Steam is the centre of it — you sign into the real Steam client and download your own library. Alongside that it runs standalone Windows .exe and .msi files, launches titles through D3DMetal, and streams: cloud services in native windows, PS4 and PS5 over Chiaki, and your own PC, Linux box or Mac over Moonlight.
Yes. Open .exe and .msi files through Bourbon, or right-click in Finder and choose Open With → Bourbon. Installers land in the right place; manually chosen executables can launch through D3DMetal.
GPTK 3 is the supported D3DMetal path — Bourbon installs it through Homebrew and gives it its own update action. GPTK 4 is Apple's newer evaluation environment: Bourbon can open Apple's download page and import the DMG for you, but it is marked experimental, since Apple expects newer beta tooling for the full Metal 4 workflow. GPTK 3 stays the default.
No. You buy Bourbon 26 once and nothing expires. It stays fully supported and keeps getting maintenance updates — fixes for macOS and Steam changes, and compatibility work. New features land in the next major version, which is a separate optional purchase. You are never forced to upgrade to keep what you already paid for.
An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) running macOS 14 Sonoma or later, an administrator account for first-time setup, and enough disk space for Steam and your games.
Pour yourself a Bourbon
Your Steam library, running on Apple Silicon. One app, one click, one payment.
$29.99
once · yours for life
Developer ID signed and notarized · no subscription · this version stays supported · major upgrades optional
Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
macOS 14 Sonoma or later
Internet for first setup