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The free app everyone loved is no longer maintained.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
24,370
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.
Beyond Windows games
Android and retro consoles,
in the same app
Bourbon 26 isn't only a Wine front-end. The sidebar that holds your Steam library also runs Android devices and console emulators — each one downloaded from its own source when you ask for it, and never bundled.
Experimental
Android, with the Google Play Store
Bourbon Android runs Google's official Android Emulator on an official Google Play system image. Every device is tuned to your Mac automatically — cores, memory and panel size — and its graphics run on Metal through MoltenVK, the same layer Bourbon already uses for Windows games.
- Tablet
- Phone
- Foldable
- Flip phone
- Google TV
- Automotive
- Desktop
Seven device types. Start with the tablet: it matches your Mac's display shape and gets Android's large-screen interface.
Nothing is bundled. Bourbon downloads about 2.5 GB from Google and needs roughly 20 GB of free space, and installing means accepting Google's Android SDK Terms. Android is still marked experimental in the app.
Available now
Retro consoles, one bottle per system
The Emulators page installs well-known console emulators from each project's own release channel through Homebrew, and they run as native Mac apps. Install one and its matching bottle on the Bottle Shelf is ready to use; multi-system front-ends sit on the same page for when one install should cover many consoles.
Drop your own ROMs into the folder for their system and they appear in Bourbon with their proper titles and box art from the Libretro database, ready to open in the right emulator.
- RetroArch multi-system
- OpenEmu multi-system
- ares multi-system
- Dolphin GameCube · Wii
- PCSX2 PlayStation 2
- PPSSPP PSP
- mGBA Game Boy · GBA
- melonDS DS · DSi
- Snes9x SNES
- Nestopia NES
- Flycast Dreamcast
- Stella Atari 2600
Bring your own games. Bourbon never downloads, bundles or hosts ROMs, disc images, BIOS files or console firmware — and an emulator that needs a BIOS says so before you install it.
Emulators are independent projects under their own licences. Console names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Virtual machines
When Wine isn't enough,
a whole OS. In development.
Some software simply needs the real thing. OS Experience runs a complete operating system in a virtual machine that Bourbon installs and manages for you. It isn't switched on in shipping builds yet — it's coming in a future release.
In development
Virtual machine · Windows
Windows 11 VM
A full Windows 11 ARM64 desktop, hosted by UTM and QEMU with Apple's hypervisor acceleration, for the applications that only exist on Windows.
- Sized to your Mac's chip and memory, not a fixed preset
- Official Microsoft install media and a Windows licence you buy — Bourbon never redistributes Windows
- For software, not games: graphics are paravirtualised, and a Mac has no GPU passthrough
In development
Virtual machine · Steam appliance
Bourbon OS
PyroSoft's own ARM64 Linux Steam appliance: Steam, Proton, FEX and Gamescope in a prebuilt guest. Bourbon manages the verified image, the guest setup and the Steam session for you.
- Steam comes from Valve — no account or games are bundled
- Runs on the same UTM host as the Windows VM, sized to your Mac
- Appears as Bourbon Linux inside the app
Labs
Try it early, eyes open
Early versions of both machines sit on Bourbon's Experimental page, switched off by default. They're there for testing ahead of an official release: they can change or be removed in any build, and they aren't meant for your day-to-day setup. Bourbon OS setup stays locked until a validated image ships — there's no download and no date yet.
Both run on stock, Apple-notarized UTM, which Bourbon installs the first time you use one. Your Windows games keep running through Wine either way — a virtual machine is for the software that needs the real thing.
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.
In development
The engine underneath
Ferrum.
Life after Rosetta.
Bourbon's Windows path runs x86-64 Wine under Rosetta 2 today. It works, and it will keep working right up until Apple retires Rosetta. Ferrum is the native engine Bourbon is growing into: it turns a game's Intel instructions into ARM64 as the game runs, answers its Windows requests through Wine, and hands its graphics to Metal — no Rosetta, no virtual machine, no Windows licence.
Smart Play, the Bottle Shelf and the rest of Bourbon sit above the translation layer and stay as they are. There's no public build and no ship date yet, and no game has been played end to end by a person. When Ferrum lands, it lands inside Bourbon 26 — nothing extra to buy.
2,624
Automated checks, each failing if its capability is removed
96%
Toward playable gameplay — not done
24
First places in a sealed three-way CPU benchmark — tied with Rosetta for the most
Figures as published on the Ferrum page. The benchmark measures CPU translation across 34 kernels, not a game's frame rate. Hollow Knight is a trademark of Team Cherry; the capture shows an owned copy under Ferrum's automated test harness, and PyroSoft is not affiliated with Team Cherry.
Open source
What we verify,
we publish
Much of the compatibility work behind Bourbon is public. Bourbon-OSS carries the reusable layer — recipes, community catalogues, patches and tools anyone can use in their own Wine prefixes — under the MIT licence. The app itself stays closed; the fixes don't.
PyroSoftPro/Bourbon-OSS
MIT
recipes/First-party Smart Play recipes and confirmed plansdata/Game fixes, community snapshot, resource pins, save-sync rules, anti-cheat listpatches/dxvk-bourbon-d3d9/MoltenVK-friendly DXVK D3D9 patchtools/steamwebhelper_shim.cThe shim that fixes Steam's black UI under Wine on Apple Silicontools/mine_fixes.pyMines protonfixes, Whisky and Lutris into Mac-safe fixestools/compat_sources.pyRefreshes Apple Gaming Wiki, AreWeAntiCheatYet, ProtonDB and MacGamingDB datatools/rom_metadata.pyLibretro titles, box art and clear logos for your ROMsprobes/Minimal D3D11 smoke tests for GPTK, DXVK and DXMT
Giving back
Paying back the projects Bourbon stands on
Wine, Whisky, CrossOver, Apple Gaming Wiki and the wider Windows-on-Mac community made Bourbon possible. Publishing what we verify is how we pay that back — so anyone can reuse it, improve it and extend it.
- Wine
- Gcenx
- CodeWeavers
- DXVK
- MoltenVK
- DXMT
- VKD3D-Proton
- winetricks
- Whisky
- Apple Gaming Wiki
- ProtonDB
- Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?
- MacGamingDB
- Homebrew
Source and Bourbon-authored recipe data are MIT-licensed. The DXVK patch keeps DXVK's own zlib licence.
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.
Yes, as an experimental feature. Bourbon Android downloads Google's official Android Emulator and an official Google Play system image — about 2.5 GB from Google, with roughly 20 GB of free space needed — and runs seven device types, from tablet and phone to Google TV and Automotive, each sized to your Mac. Installing means accepting Google's Android SDK Terms.
It installs emulators, not games. The Emulators page installs each emulator from its own project's releases through Homebrew and runs it as a native Mac app, and console emulators get a matching bottle on the Bottle Shelf. Bourbon never downloads, bundles or hosts ROMs, disc images, BIOS files or console firmware — those are always yours to supply.
Not in shipping builds yet. OS Experience — a Windows 11 ARM64 virtual machine for software that needs real Windows, and Bourbon OS, a Linux Steam appliance — is coming in a future release. Early versions sit on the Experimental page for testers, and Bourbon OS setup stays locked until a validated image ships — there is no download and no date yet. The Windows VM uses official Microsoft media and needs a Windows licence you buy, and it is meant for software, not games. None of this changes how Bourbon runs Windows games today: that is still Wine, with no VM and no licence.
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.
Ferrum is the native x86-64 translation engine Bourbon is growing into, so Windows games keep running on Apple Silicon after Rosetta is retired — no Rosetta, no virtual machine, no Windows licence. It is in development: there is no public build yet, and it will ship inside Bourbon 26 with nothing extra to buy.
The app isn't, but its reusable compatibility layer is. Bourbon-OSS publishes Bourbon's Smart Play recipes, the community compatibility catalogues, a MoltenVK-friendly DXVK D3D9 patch, the Steam CEF shim and the tools that mine public fix sources, under the MIT licence — the DXVK patch keeps DXVK's own zlib licence.
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