Rosetta
Hacker ApprovedRanked 8 of 27 compatibility layers by recommenders
Apple's translation layer lets x86 apps run on Apple silicon, and people praise how well it works. The most common caveat is that it only runs apps still compatible with modern macOS.
Apple's translation layer lets x86 apps run on Apple silicon, and people praise how well it works. The most common caveat is that it only runs apps still compatible with modern macOS.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: 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
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 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 older x86 software on Apple silicon
“Most of those are gonna work using Rosetta, crossover, and the game porting toolkit.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Mac gaming is finally getting the overpowered upgrade it deserves” “the ability to run the older software from a different architecture with Rosetta”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy” “it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro” Seen as strong engineering
“If you dont think apple silicon and rosetta rollout was a massively successful and high difficulty technical accomplishment”
Comment from 16 May 2026 in “Steve Jobs Next Computer: His Forgotten Exile Years” “Rosetta 1 was better engineering than people remember”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “I Ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii” “Rosetta worked quite well for Apple”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for World Makers” - Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Nominal Types in WebAssembly”
Near-native speed through translation
“Run ARM64 Linux and install Rosetta inside it. Even on the MacBook Neo it'll be faster than your 2020 Intel Mac.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine” “JIT and AoT translation like Rosetta can make it almost native”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native” Works very well
“Rosetta works very well, but only for those apps that are still compatible with modern macOS at all”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production” “Rosetta worked quite well for Apple”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for World Makers”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Uncertain long-term support from Apple
“It's certainly a shame if they got rid of Rosetta forever so hopefully it's still available as an optional download.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back” “they're clearly uninterested in supporting it long term”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Steam Machine” “Yeah, that's not very reassuring.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm” Hard to uninstall or clean up
“not being able to uninstall Developer Tools or Rosetta when you are done with it”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Bugs Apple Loves” “The aot cache of that slowly fills up and its not easy to clean up.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Apple, What Have You Done?”
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 |
| RosettaThis page | 18 | 6 | 75% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
25 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the Rosetta project is refreshingly open”
“with WINE, Rosetta, and WSL, it is actually decently easy nowadays”
“It's certainly a shame if they got rid of Rosetta forever so hopefully it's still available as an optional download.”
“the ability to run the older software from a different architecture with Rosetta”
“it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement”
“Most of those are gonna work using Rosetta, crossover, and the game porting toolkit.”
“they're clearly uninterested in supporting it long term”
“I still can't believe Rosetta was delivered and works like that.”
“Ability to run x64 docker images seminatively was one of the big reasons I jumped to the M1 platform”
“Rosetta works very well, but only for those apps that are still compatible with modern macOS at all”
“Rosetta worked quite well for Apple”
“If you dont think apple silicon and rosetta rollout was a massively successful and high difficulty technical accomplishment”
“in case of macOS I would have to install Rosetta as well.”
“Rosetta 1 was better engineering than people remember”
“They support Rosetta on Mac”
“Apple did it with rosetta.”
“Run ARM64 Linux and install Rosetta inside it. Even on the MacBook Neo it'll be faster than your 2020 Intel Mac.”
“JIT and AoT translation like Rosetta can make it almost native”
“the stage was set by His Jobsness with Mach binaries and Rosetta”
“The aot cache of that slowly fills up and its not easy to clean up.”
“not being able to uninstall Developer Tools or Rosetta when you are done with it”
“Rosetta is an attempt at a minimal, explicit standard for closing that gap.”
“a lightweight protocol and CLI that helps AI coding agents build and retain institutional knowledge about a codebase across sessions”
“Yeah, that's not very reassuring.”
“Isn't Rosetta kinda bad though? And won't get much better because it's not open source?”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.