Windows games on your Mac. Open it and play.

Magic Kettle runs Windows games on Apple Silicon and does all the work itself. It figures out what the game needs, finds the settings it runs best with and remembers them. Nothing to set up, nothing to think about: open the game and play.

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Free and open source · macOS 15 or later · Apple Silicon · How to install

Magic Kettle icon: a kettle shaped like a game controller

How it works

You do one thing: open the game. Everything else is Magic Kettle's job. No settings to pick, no guides to read, no Windows to install.

You open the game

Double-click its .exe in Finder, or drop the game's folder on Magic Kettle. Installers work too.

Magic Kettle works it out

It looks at the game, sets up everything it needs and tries settings until the game runs well. On its own, while you wait a moment.

You play

The settings that worked are remembered, so from then on the game simply starts.

See it

The whole app is a library of your games. There is nothing else to learn.

The Magic Kettle library before any games are added, with three steps: find the game, double-click its .exe, start playing
Open a game once and it lives here, one click from playing.
Magic Kettle's first start: it downloads what Windows games need, with a progress bar for each part
The first start downloads what games need. It happens once, by itself.

Install

Three steps, once. Magic Kettle is free and isn't notarized by Apple, which needs a paid developer account, so macOS asks you to allow it the first time.

Download

Download MagicKettle-…zip from the latest release, open it and move Magic Kettle to Applications.

Open it once

Open Magic Kettle. macOS says it can't verify the app and doesn't open it. Click Done.

Allow it

Open System Settings › Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway next to Magic Kettle, then confirm. From then on Magic Kettle opens like any other app.

Or, instead of steps 2 and 3, run this in Terminal once: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Magic Kettle.app"

Made to stay out of your way

Everything a Windows game expects is handled for you, quietly.

DirectX 9 to 12

Magic Kettle reads the game and picks how to draw it on Metal. If the first choice fails, it tries the next. DirectX 12 games run on Apple's D3DMetal, which you add from Apple in a couple of minutes.

Components installed for you

Visual C++, .NET and RPG Maker's run time packages come from their publishers, only when a game needs them.

Your saves in one place

All games share one profile, so saves and settings stay put however many games you add.

Old games, made bigger

Games built for small screens are enlarged smoothly instead of switching your Mac's display.

Japanese games

Games made for Japanese Windows start with the right language and fonts, so the text reads correctly.

Private and open

Nothing about you or your games is sent anywhere. Every download is checked against a pinned fingerprint. The code is Apache-2.0.

What it can do

Works today

Free and open source. More games and features arrive with every update.

  • Works now: DirectX 9–11 games, Unity games, RPG Maker XP/VX/VX Ace, games that need Visual C++ or .NET.
  • Stores: Steam and Epic Games Store install with one button.
  • DirectX 12: games run on Apple's D3DMetal, which you download from Apple yourself, free. How to add it
  • Needs: a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 15 or later.