CrossOver by CodeWeavers
Hacker ApprovedRanked 5 of 27 compatibility layers by recommenders
Recommended for running Windows games and apps on Mac and Linux, though many titles fail and performance can lag native Windows.
Recommended for running Windows games and apps on Mac and Linux, though many titles fail and performance can lag native Windows.
68 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 51
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 51 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs many Windows games on Mac
“Crossover works wonders. Currently playing Hogwarts Legacy from the Epic Store on my Macbook M4 Pro”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains” “Crossover has allowed me to 100% Spider-Man Remastered on a base M5 MacBook Pro.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Googlebook: Designed for Gemini Intelligence – Coming Fall 2026 – Googlebook” “CrossOver lets me play most single player games just fine on my M4 Pro”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo” - Comment from 15 May 2026 in “RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game?”
- Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “New Apple TV 4K”
Runs Windows business and legacy apps
“sold a polished version of Wine making a lot of Windows only enterprise software work on Linux”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers” “Crossover maintained compatibility with 32-bit windows applications even after Catalina.”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Wine 11.0” “I use crossover and/or Lutris on Linux in order to run most of my 90s Windows games”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders” - Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?”
- Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS”
Long-running, well-maintained project
“compatibility layers like Crossover/Wine are already great for gaming”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'” “Credit to wine and cross over (?)for years and years of work as well”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs” “I've been a happy customer on and off for about 20 years.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “MacBook Neo Is a 'Shock' to the PC Industry: Asus Co-CEO” - Comment from 15 May 2026 in “I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows”
Performance close to native
“Crossover could play the game at nearly the same framerate as native”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark” “Some crossover games perform better than the native ports”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm” “About the same as Linux, if you use Crossover.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “People keep flocking to Linux, not just to escape Windows”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Many games still fail or break
“For a while it was possible to get it working with Crossover, and then it broke again”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Wine 11.0” “With CrossOver there are a handful of games that work well, most don't.”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark” “crossover didn't work most of the time, got stuff working under wineskin and let the license lapse”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Wine 11.0 RC1 – Run Windows Applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS” - Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm”
Performance lags native Windows
“not always enough in terms of performance for many games compared to a Windows machine”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo” “I would imagine the experience would be pretty poor”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “People keep flocking to Linux, not just to escape Windows” “you've gotta run most PC games using CrossOver on Mac with significant performance implications”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13” Costs money while Proton is free
“Crossover support is worse than Proton, so it will not be viable alternative in real gaming scenarios.”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Steam Machine” “CrossOver ($ annual license fee) is not ideal compared to Steam on Windows or Steam/Proton on Linux.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Apple Introduces MacBook Pro with All‑New M5 Pro and M5 Max” “It's exciting to pay Crossover to support half of the library Proton offers for free.”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “M5 Ultra Mac Studio Review” Setup and upkeep are cumbersome
“the user experience with Crossover is that you have to manage the whole thing of installing Windows Steam in a Wine bottle”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Steam Machine” “Just knowing there's a folder called drive_c on my Mac is the stuff of nightmares.”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Abruptly Terminates VeraCrypt Account, Halting Windows Updates”
Other compatibility layers people recommend
The four most recommended other compatibility layers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proton by Valve | 451 | 189 | 70% | 13 | 2 yrs31 owners | Approved |
| Wine | 329 | 88 | 79% | 13 | 10 yrs11 owners | Approved |
| Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) | 159 | 101 | 61% | 12 | 3 yrs9 owners | — |
| WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) | 115 | 55 | 68% | 12 | — | Approved |
| CrossOver by CodeWeaversThis page | 51 | 17 | 75% | 11 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 80 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Crossover on my apple silicon mac works wonders.”
“Microsoft Office ran almost perfectly with CrossOver”
“It's exciting to pay Crossover to support half of the library Proton offers for free.”
“You can probably get it working on your Mac with a tiny bit of Crossover/Wine/GPTK tweaking.”
“the promise of Proton/Wine/Crossover is that -for user-mode stuff- it works at least as well as Microsoft Windows”
“Most of those are gonna work using Rosetta, crossover, and the game porting toolkit.”
“Crossover support is worse than Proton, so it will not be viable alternative in real gaming scenarios.”
“WINE via Crossover Linux has become very good”
“Skyrim runs well on my M2 mac mini through crossover and rosetta”
“Crossover has allowed me to 100% Spider-Man Remastered on a base M5 MacBook Pro.”
“Just knowing there's a folder called drive_c on my Mac is the stuff of nightmares.”
“Crossover works wonders. Currently playing Hogwarts Legacy from the Epic Store on my Macbook M4 Pro”
“I have a Windows game I can't run under CrossOver (aka Wine 11) or a VM, only because its anti-piracy layer doesn't accept those circumstances.”
“Crossover[1] is surprisingly good for this purpose if you game occasionally and don't need FPS-level responsiveness.”
“they don't have enough resources to keep all major Windows apps working well”
“I've been a happy customer on and off for about 20 years.”
“not always enough in terms of performance for many games compared to a Windows machine”
“CrossOver lets me play most single player games just fine on my M4 Pro”
“CrossOver ($ annual license fee) is not ideal compared to Steam on Windows or Steam/Proton on Linux.”
“For a while it was possible to get it working with Crossover, and then it broke again”
“they try a lot harder to integrate well with the system than equivalent freeware apps on Windows”
“Crossover maintained compatibility with 32-bit windows applications even after Catalina.”
“CrossOver (which is an improved version of Wine, guaranteed to work with certain commercial programs)”
“you've gotta run most PC games using CrossOver on Mac with significant performance implications”
“sold a polished version of Wine making a lot of Windows only enterprise software work on Linux”
“crossover didn't work most of the time, got stuff working under wineskin and let the license lapse”
“Some crossover games perform better than the native ports”
“it will hang indefinitely when you try to actually start a game”
“there are plenty of circumstances where Steam via Crossover is essentially unnoticable”
“I would imagine the experience would be pretty poor”
“About the same as Linux, if you use Crossover.”
“get garmin windows software to run on wine or linux crossover”
“I use crossover and/or Lutris on Linux in order to run most of my 90s Windows games”
“compatibility layers like Crossover/Wine are already great for gaming”
“the user experience with Crossover is that you have to manage the whole thing of installing Windows Steam in a Wine bottle”
“Credit to wine and cross over (?)for years and years of work as well”
“Crossover could play the game at nearly the same framerate as native”
“I don't think there's any issue to run any older game using Crossover or similar on a Mac.”
“With CrossOver there are a handful of games that work well, most don't.”
“Their builds favor stability over new and shiny compatibility/feature support.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.