game-porting-toolkit.md

How to install game-porting-toolkit (aka proton for macOS)

You also might wanna just use Whisky which does this automatically

This guide works on macOS 13.4+ using Command Line Tools for XCode 15 Beta!

What is this?

In the recent WWDC, Apple announced and released the "game porting toolkit", which upon further inspection this is just a modified version of CrossOver's fork of wine which is a "compatibility layer" that allows you to run Windows applications on macOS and Linux.

Why would I want this?

Playing Windows games on MacOS

How?

First, install homebrew which is an amazing macOS package manager, which is weirdly enough what Apple themselves have used for distrobution of this program

brew tap apple/homebrew-apple

This adds apple's offical "repository" for their "forumula" (package), which includes the game-porting-toolkit

AArch64 (ARM, Apple's chips, not x86_64/Intel)

Make sure that rosetta2 is installed

/usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

homebrew to inside Rosetta

arch -x86_64 zsh
cd /usr/local && mkdir homebrew
curl -L github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew

arch -x86_64 /usr/local/homebrew/bin/brew tap apple/homebrew-apple
arch -x86_64 /usr/local/homebrew/bin/brew install game-porting-toolkit

Now, you can install the game-porting-toolkit

Warning: This will take a LONG TIME, and will use up a LOT of system resources because it needs to compile a really large project (LLVM)

brew install game-porting-toolkit

Then, go to this url (on apple.com) to download the actual toolkit, place it somewhere memorable.

How do I use it?

First, you need to create a "wine prefix" for your game.

To do this,

WINEPREFIX=~/my-game-prefix `brew --prefix game-porting-toolkit`/bin/wine64 winecfg

Where you would replace my-game-prefix with whatever you want you want it to be.

You should now change (in the window that pops up) the windows version to "windows 10"

Press ok, and then install your game into my-game-prefix

Finally, to install apple's game porting toolkit, use

ditto [REPLACE THIS WITH WHEREVER YOU PUT THE GAME PORTING TOOLKIT]/lib/ `brew --prefix game-porting-toolkit`/lib/

and finally, to run the executable,

[REPLACE THIS WITH WHEREVER YOU PUT THE GAME PORTING TOOLKIT]/gameportingtoolkit ~/my-game-prefix 'C:\\Program Files\\MyGame\\MyGame.exe'

or, for without the debug GUI

[REPLACE THIS WITH WHEREVER YOU PUT THE GAME PORTING TOOLKIT]/gameportingtoolkit-no-hud ~/my-game-prefix 'C:\\Program Files\\MyGame\\MyGame.exe'

Integration into Steam

TODO

You could try AGPT - I'm not affiliated with them but this worked for me without Brew.

The Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK) is Apple's Wine-based tool to run Windows games on macOS, similar to Proton on Linux. To install it, first ensure you’re on macOS Sonoma or later. Download GPTK via Apple’s developer portal, then use Homebrew to install dependencies like game-porting-toolkit and diva. After setup, prefix your game’s executable with game porting toolkit to run it. It’s still early, so performance varies—think of it like checking the morning teer result you might hit a lucky run or face compatibility issues. For smoother gameplay, tweak settings or wait for updates.