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Apple Silicon M1: How to Run DOS Games and Apps
Let’s be honest. There are still plenty of available DOS games (and even applications) that might make you realize that you need to have the ability to run DOS stuff on your computer.
When it comes to using the DOSBox on your Apple Silicon M1 Mac I was a little bit disappointed that we don’t have a native-compiled version for this machine. Fortunately, after looking for some time online I was able to find a version specifically made for M1 machines.
This version is called DOSBox-X. This is a fork of the DOSBox project and has some additional features bundled in there. Honestly, the main feature that I care about in DOSBox-X is the native binary compiled for Apple Silicon processors. Also, DOSBox-X is known to have a wider range of hardware emulation options.
Installation
You can install the app by using two methods:
- From the GitHub page find the release for ARM64 there. This is the version that was specifically compiled for Apple Silicon.
- Using the HomeBrew package manager:
brew install — cask dosbox-x
Keep in mind that the HomeBrew version seems to be targeting only x86_64 as of now, which means it will run through Rosetta 2 translation layer. It’s better to grab the GitHub version to get a native M1 build.
Once downloaded— copy files to your favorite directory (e.g /Applications) and run the “dosbox-x.app” from the “dosbox-x” folder. You might get a warning about the app being from an unknown developer. Go to “Security & Privacy” and “Allow” the app to be running from there.
Run it again and it should work fine now. Once you start the app — you should be greeted with a DOS Prompt.
