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I would like to be able to run some old Windows and/or DOS games and applications on my M1 Mac. If I have an .exe file that would run on an Intel mac using Boxer or Wine, what's the best low-cost solution for an M1 Mac? I can't afford Parallels or equivalent for this. I don't want to reboot into a different drive to achieve this.

Wine and WineBottler do not appear to work.

When I try to install them, Wine will not copy over to my Applications folder. Does Wine work with M1 Macs? It's not mentioned explicitly on their site, but https://wiki.winehq.org/ARM .

Is there a solution involving running QEmu, installing Linux and running an emulator inside Linux? Is this realistic, or is the performance unacceptable? I'm not planning to run high-end graphics here - just some old abandonware or equivalent.

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  • i'm sure someone will come up with a comprehensive answer, hence just a comment - afaik, Windows [on ARM] 11 inside a VM like Parallels is the only way. It contains X86 emulation; the Mac does not, neither does any current Virtual Machine. They are hypervisors not emulators.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jun 1, 2022 at 15:41
  • Not fussed whether it's a hypervisor, simulator, or emulator, just want something that works and doesn't cost a fortune! Saw what looks like a v complex method here, using QEmu - randomblock1.com/blog/qemu-windows-mac
    – tomh
    Commented Jun 1, 2022 at 15:45
  • My son runs an M1 with Parallels and uses it to support various Windows programs for university - simulations etc for engineering, not Word...
    – Solar Mike
    Commented Jun 1, 2022 at 16:59

2 Answers 2

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The best and most low cost way is to use qemu. You do not need to install Linux - you can use qemu directly to emulate an Intel-compatible CPU in order to run your old DOS programs.

Whether or not the performance is acceptable is very subjective. It also depends a lot on what you think is "old PC software" - i.e. is it Digger from 1983 or is it Quake from 1996?

An easy way to get qemu running, if you do not want to start it from the Terminal, is to use the free software UTM:

https://mac.getutm.app/

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  • And the easy way to run qemu is use UTM.app mac.getutm.app/gallery
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Jun 1, 2022 at 22:01
  • This is really helpful thank you! It says folder sharing is unreliable in Windows XP. I haven’t managed to get it working. Any idea how to make an ISO disk image on the Mac that XP will be able to read?
    – tomh
    Commented Jun 3, 2022 at 7:40
  • If anyone else is trying this, using an .iso of the Opera browser outlined in this youtube video worked to allow me to transfer files from the web into Windows XP: youtube.com/watch?v=CTT5eMKvNVc&t=509s&ab_channel=Jack
    – tomh
    Commented Jun 4, 2022 at 7:11
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I have used DOSBox on Intel Macs to run old PC software. I do not have a M1 Mac, so I will answer based on the article titled "Apple Silicon M1: How to Run DOS Games and Apps".

There is a fork of the DOSBox project called DOSBox-X, which supports Intel-based and ARM-based Macs. According to the article, there are two variations available.

  • Native binary compiled for Apple Silicon processors. The release for ARM64 can be downloaded from GitHub. A link to download the same macOS ARM64 version can also be found on the DOSBox-X home page.

  • Native binary compiled for x86_64 processors, which means it will run through Rosetta 2 translation layer. This can be installed through using the HomeBrew package manager:

     brew install — cask dosbox-x
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