Highball is a native macOS app (and CLI) that sets up Wine, DXMT, D3DMetal and DXVK for
you, installs Steam or connects your Epic library, and tells you honestly what runs, what
doesn't, and which renderer to use.
The difference is the data. Every verdict comes from an open, CC0 compatibility database:
verified runs, per-game renderer verdicts, and the kernel-anti-cheat blocklist, with
provenance on every claim. It's a standalone dataset any tool can build on
(highball-db, browsable at
gethighball.com/database),
so you can check whether your game runs before downloading a byte.
Download
macOS 14+, notarized. Drag it to Applications, open it and press Get started: Highball
installs Rosetta if needed, downloads the engine and prepares a Windows environment, then asks
where your games are (Steam, Epic, or a Windows program you have).
Or with Homebrew:
brew install --cask highball
Not sure it'll run your game? Check the compatibility database →
Beta, working end to end: one-button setup → Steam login → game, with the graphics
mode picked per game from the database and msync-accelerated launches. Auto-updating. Not a paid
tool and not a thin wrapper: engines are assembled from pinned, SHA-256-verified upstream
builds, and the compatibility data is public and free for anyone to reuse.
Will my game run?
That's the whole point of the project, so the answer lives in an open, CC0 database: a
verified renderer verdict, the frame rate people actually got, and provenance on every
claim. Verified runs, community reports and machine-derived predictions are labelled
separately, so you always know which one you're looking at, and it flags kernel-anti-cheat
titles as impossible before you download 80 GB.
Cyberpunk 2077, for one, runs 60–82 fps on an M5 (D3DMetal + FSR 2.1), and Red Dead
Redemption 2 plays on an M1 Pro after a MoltenVK fix that is now a pull request upstream.
Renderer switching, 32-bit apps via Wine's WoW64, Windows runtimes, ReShade, your Epic
library via Legendary and your GOG library via gogdl work too.
Launchers
Steam and Epic (through Legendary) work on the default engine. Rockstar, the EA app and
Ubisoft Connect draw their sign-in windows in an embedded browser that needs Highball's Wine 11
engine (built from the CrossOver 26.3 tree); Play offers that engine when a game needs it, and
you can move an environment to it in Settings. Rockstar signs in and runs GTA V and Red Dead
Redemption 2 here, the EA app signs in and runs The Sims 4, Ubisoft Connect and Battle.net show
their sign-in windows but no game has been played through them here yet. GOG Galaxy still comes
up black, so you can't sign in through it; Connect GOG does Galaxy's jobs instead, through
Heroic's gogdl and comet: sign in on GOG's page in your browser, and your GOG library installs
straight into an environment with its covers, achievements and cloud saves. GOG games you
installed from offline installers show up as GOG games too. Each launcher case is tracked in its
recipe's knownIssues.
Getting started
Requires Apple Silicon and macOS 14+, and prompts for Rosetta 2 if needed.
First run takes a while: the engine download is a few hundred MB, and Steam's first launch
unpacks its own ~235 MB client. Under Rosetta that can take 15 to 25 minutes; the strip at the
bottom of the window shows the step, the elapsed time and the range it usually takes. Let it
finish. If it stalls, relaunch and it resumes.
Everything lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Highball/. Nothing touches /usr or
/Library; deleting that folder is a full uninstall.
⌘C / ⌘V / ⌘A work inside Windows apps — the Command keys are mapped to Ctrl, and Option to
Alt so Alt-based game bindings keep working. Turn it off per environment (Settings, then
Environments) for Wine's default, where Command acts as Alt.
git clone https://github.com/gauthierpiarrette/highball && cd highball # the app + CLI
git clone https://github.com/gauthierpiarrette/highball-db ../highball-db # recipes + game database (CC0)
swift build -c release
.build/release/highball engine install spike/engine-manifest.json
.build/release/highball engine accept <the id install printed> apple-gptk-license-2023-08-17 # optional: D3DMetal
.build/release/highball bottle create play --recipe steam
.build/release/highball run play Steam
Run every command from the highball repo root. Recipe and database paths resolve relative
to the current directory, with highball-db as a sibling folder.
Played something? highball report files the result to the open database (community reports
already cover M4, M5 and macOS 15). The in-app Report a Problem button is for bugs in
Highball itself. Questions and quick help: the Highball Discord.
Why Highball is built this way
This niche has a cautionary tale: Whisky was
archived in 2025. Highball is built to avoid the ways these tools tend to die:
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
