Macs have a thriving ecosystem of software, but some programs still only support Windows. Whether you want to use business software or play Windows PC games, there are many ways to run Windows programs on your Mac.

Install Software On Macbook Air

Switch between macOS and Windows. After installing both Windows and Windows Support Software, you can switch back to macOS using the Boot Camp system tray item in Windows. Select the macOS volume, then restart your Mac. To switch from macOS to Windows, use the Startup Disk preference pane to select the Boot Camp volume, then restart your Mac. When you install Microsoft Windows on your Mac, Boot Camp Assistant automatically opens the Boot Camp installer, which installs the latest Windows support software (drivers). If that doesn't happen, or you experience any of the following issues while using Windows on your Mac, follow the steps in this article. To install the latest software updates on your Mac computer please follow these steps. Click on the Apple ( ) menu in the upper left hand corner and then select the Software Update menu option. How to install Boot Camp software on your Windows 10 partition. When Windows 10 loads for the first time on your Mac, a Boot Camp software installer will automatically pop up. Click Install. Click I accept the terms in the license agreement. Click Install. Click Finish when the installation is complete. Jan 19, 2018  How to Install Mac Software 1. Double-click the application file you've downloaded from the Internet. Follow the instructions. Drag the application to the Applications folder. Delete the downloaded file once you’re done. Here’s how to install software on your Mac, from the App Store and beyond, and why all these different methods exist. Mac App Store: Click a Button to Install an App We’re all used to app stores on our phones, but on the desktop they remain an oddity.

Some of these methods are similar to the ways you can install Windows software on Linux or run Windows programs on a Chromebook. Virtual machines, dual-booting, the Wine compatibility layer, and remote desktop solutions are all included here.

Virtual Machines

We recommend using a virtual machine program, ideally Parallels or VMWare Fusion, to run Windows applications on a Mac without rebooting. For maximum performance, which is particularly necessary for gaming, we recommend dual-booting Windows with Boot Camp instead.

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A virtual machine is one of the best ways to run Windows desktop software. They allow you to install Windows and other operating systems in a window on your Mac desktop. Windows will think it’s running on a real computer, but it’s actually running inside a piece of software on your Mac.

You don’t have to use your Windows program in the virtual machine window, either—many virtual machine programs allow you to break Windows programs out of your virtual machine window so they can appear on your Mac desktop. However, they’re still running inside the virtual machine in the background.

You’ll need a Windows license to install Windows in a virtual machine. If you already have a product key, you can download Windows installation media for free and install it in a virtual machine program.

Free mac os software

RELATED:How to Seamlessly Run Windows Programs on Your Mac with Parallels

Popular virtual machine programs for Mac include Parallels and VMware Fusion. Each of these is a paid program, so you’ll have to buy both a Windows license and a copy of your virtual machine program of choice. You can also use the completely free and open-source VirtualBox for Mac, but its 3D graphics support and Mac operating system integration aren’t as good. Parallels and VMWare Fusion both offer free trials, so you can try all these programs and decide which is best for you.

Note:We don’t often recommend paid software, but in the case of Parallels Desktop, it’s something we use at How-To Geek every single day for testing software and running Windows. The integration with macOS is amazingly well done, and the speed blows away VirtualBox. In the long run, the price is well worth it.

There’s one big downside to virtual machines: 3D graphics performance isn’t amazing, so this isn’t the best way to run Windows games on your Mac. Yes, it can work—especially with older games—but you won’t get the best performance, even in an ideal situation. Many games, especially newer ones, will be unplayable. That’s where the next option comes into play.

Boot Camp

RELATED:How to Install Windows on a Mac With Boot Camp

Apple’s Boot Camp allows you to install Windows alongside macOS on your Mac. Only one operating system can be running at a time, so you’ll have to restart your Mac to switch between macOS and Windows. If you’ve ever dual-booted Linux on your Windows PC, it’s just like that.

Installing Windows as a real operating system on your Mac is the best idea if you want to play Windows games or use demanding applications that need all the performance they can get. When you install Windows on your Mac, you’ll be able to use Windows and Windows applications with the maximum possible performance. Your Mac will perform as well as a Windows PC with the same specifications.

The downside here is that you can’t run macOS applications and Windows applications side-by-side at the same time. If you just want to run a Windows desktop application alongside your Mac applications, a virtual machine will probably be ideal. On the other hand, if you want to play the latest Windows games on your Mac, Boot Camp will be ideal.

As with virtual machines, you’ll need a Windows license to install Windows on your Mac.

Wine

RELATED:How to Run Windows Programs on a Mac With Wine

Wine originated on Linux. It’s a compatibility layer that allows Windows applications to run on other operating systems. Essentially, Wine is an attempt to rewrite the Windows code that applications depend on so they can run on other operating systems. This means that Wine is nowhere near perfect. It won’t run every Windows application, and will have bugs with many of them. The Wine AppDB can give you some idea of which applications are supported, although it focuses on Linux support.

Nevertheless, Wine is one way to try running Windows applications on a Mac. Because it doesn’t require you actually use Windows, you don’t need a Windows license to use Wine. It’s completely free. Just download Wine or WineBottler for macOS and see how well it works for your application.

Install Software On Mac Unidentified Developer

CrossOver Mac

Install Software On Macbook Pro

CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Mac is a paid application that will run Windows programs on Mac. It uses the open-source Wine code to accomplish this, but CrossOver provides a nice graphical interface and focuses on officially supporting popular programs. If an officially supported program doesn’t work, you can contact CodeWeavers and expect them to make it work for you. CodeWeavers contributes their improvements back to the open-source Wine project, so paying for CrossOver Mac also helps the Wine project itself.

CrossOver offers a free trial it you want to try it out first. You can also view a list of which programs run well on CrossOver before buying. While CrossOver focuses on compatibility, it’s still based on Wine, and won’t work with everything.

Most people will probably be happiest going for a virtual machine program and a Windows license. With CrossOver, you don’t need to run a Windows virtual machine—but, if you do run a Windows virtual machine, you’ll be able to run almost any Windows program with less risk of bugs. CrossOver does theoretically allow you to run Windows PC games on a Mac with better performance than you’d get in a virtual machine, but you’ll risk running into bugs and unsupported programs. Boot Camp may still be a better solution for that.

Remote Desktop

RELATED:How to Access Windows Remote Desktop Over the Internet

Install Software On Many Computers One Time

If you already have a Windows system, you could skip running Windows software on your Mac completely and use remote desktop software to access the Windows machine from your Mac’s desktop. Organizations with business software that runs on Windows can host Windows servers and make their applications available to Macs, Chromebooks, Linux PCs, iPads, Android tablet, and other devices. If you’re just a home user who also has a Windows PC, you could configure that Windows PC for remote access and connect to it whenever you need a Windows application. Bear in mind that this isn’t ideal for visually intensive applications like PC games.

If you’re a Chrome user, you can even use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to a Windows PC running Chrome from your Mac running Chrome.

All these tricks obviously require more work than simply installing a Windows program on a Windows PC. If you have a Mac, you should focus on using Mac software when possible. Windows programs won’t be as integrated or work as well.

You may have to buy a Windows license for your Mac to get the best compatibility, whether you’re using a virtual machine or installing Windows in Boot Camp. Wine and CrossOver are nice ideas, but they aren’t perfect.

Image Credit: Roman Soto on Flickr

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MacPorts is a command-line package manager for macOS. If you’re familiar with apt-get or yum from Linux, then you know what a package manager does. It handles downloading, installing, updating and managing certain applications and their dependencies within macOS. With MacPorts you can install Linux applications on macOS from the command line.

What can I install?

Most of these applications are open-source, command-line utilities, but there are a fair share of “real” open-source, GUI-based applications. as well.

Like any package manager, MacPorts searches a library of downloadable software. When you find what you need, MacPorts downloads and installs the appropriate software and dependencies in the right place. This saves you the trouble of downloading repositories from GitHub and building software from source packages while still getting access to a wide range of Linux’s best command-line tools and GUI applications.

If you read our post on Homebrew, you know that macOS is missing some “standard” Linux terminal commands out of the box. Mac users won’t find common command-line tools like nmap or wget, and there’s no native package manager on the Mac to provide them. You can also use MacPorts to install open-source software like GIMP.

Installing MacPorts

MacPorts requires the latest version of Xcode for your OS version. You can download Xcode from the Mac App Store or Apple’s developer website.

While you can run most of the MacPort commands without Xcode, you won’t be able to run many of the packages until you install it.

Installing Xcode Developer Tools

1. Open Terminal and use the command below to trigger the installation of macOS’ developer tools:

2. Click “Install” in the pop-up box.

3. Wait for the files to download and install.

Installing the MacPorts Package

If you already have the Xcode and the developer tools installed, you can jump right to this step.

1. Download the latest release of MacPorts from GitHub. Make sure you scroll down to choose the version that matches your version of macOS. At the time of publication, there is no version of MacPorts for Apple’s newest OS, High Sierra.

2. Install the package from your Downloads folder.

3. Open a new Terminal window and run the command port.

If that command returns “MacPorts 2.4.1” and provides a slightly different-looking command prompt, then you’re ready to rock!

Install software on mac remotely

Install Linux Apps with MacPorts

To install some Linux apps on macOS with MacPorts, we will first need to search for the relevant programs.

1. To see a gigantic list of all available packages, open Terminal, type port list and press Enter.

3. Obviously, that’s a lot to look through. We can use the port search command to find something specific. Let’s search for nmap using the command below:

4. That returns a few matching packages. The first one, just called “nmap,” is the one we’re looking for.

5. To get more information about that package we can use the info command:

6. That returns some specific information about nmap. That all looks good, so we can install with the command below:

Note the sudo prefix which will require your admin password to fire.

7. Depending on the package you’re installing, there might be a large list of dependencies. These are software packages that your desired port relies on, and you’ll need to install them alongside your port of choice. Type “Y” and press “Enter” to accept the installation.

8. When the installation is complete, you can run the command as you would on Linux via Terminal.

Conclusion

Install Dmg File On Mac

MacPorts is a powerful package manager that will connect you to a huge array of open-source binaries and applications that you can download and install on demand. If you want to learn more of the application’s commands, you can check out the MacPorts Guide for more information.