Playing Xbox One Games On Mac

The Xbox One lineup of consoles traditionally brings gaming and entertainment to your living room TV, but there's long been a way to stream video and audio to a Windows 10 PC. For Mac users, this was always a bit of a sore spot, as there wasn't a quality solution to do the same thing. That's all changed with the arrival of OneCast, a macOS app (regularly $20 but currently on sale for $10) that is designed specifically for streaming your Xbox One to your Mac. Whether you need to share the TV or you'd like to get a little gaming in while people think you're working, let's take a look at the setup process and my opinion on how well it actually works.

A few words of warning

OneCast isn't an official product of Microsoft, and there's rumbling in a few forums that it could at any time disappear if, say, a cease-and-desist order comes through. This might not ever happen, so if you don't mind risking the one-time fee you pay for OneCast, let's proceed.

What you need before using OneCast

Before you get started with this process, there are a few boxes to check to ensure you can actually use OneCast to stream Xbox games to your Mac.

Feb 27, 2018 Windows 10 users have been able to stream Xbox One titles to their PCs since 2015, but macOS users have been out of luck. A new $10 app called OneCast, however, has apparently figured out how to. Jun 19, 2017 Spencer McGuire is a tech / gaming nerd. By day he works as a Systems Administrator, by night he likes to play video games and mess with the latest technology he can get his hands on. His gaming system of choice is the Xbox One, as that is where all of his friends play their games too, but also has a Nintendo Switch and a Windows 10 gaming PC.

You will need:

A Mac running macOS 10.10 Yosemite or newer.
An Xbox One (including S and X).
A router connected to both your Mac and Xbox One.

You will benefit from:

A wired connection from your Xbox One to your router using an Ethernet cable.
A wireless connection using the 5GHz band (if available) to your Mac.

How to enable game streaming on Xbox One

Before your Xbox One can stream games to your Mac, you must first enable the game streaming option. Here's how to do it.

Hit the Xbox button on your controller.
Navigate to the Settings tab. It looks like a gear.
Select Settings.
Select Preferences.
Select Xbox app connectivity.
Select Only from profiles signed in on this Xbox.
Select Allow game streaming to other devices.

How to set up and use OneCast

With your Xbox One running, connected to your network, and set up for game streaming, it's time to deal with OneCast on your Mac.

Navigate to the OneCast website.
Click Free Trial or Buy now. In this case, we will take advantage of the 14-day trial to see how well it works. You can add a license key later to unlock the full version.
Click Click here. The download will begin.
Click OneCast.dmg. The app will be unpacked.
Click and drag the OneCast app into the Applications folder. It will now install.
Click Launchpad.
Click OneCast to launch the app.
Click Register Xbox One. OneCast will scan for your Xbox.
Click OK. A browser window will open asking you to sign into your Xbox Live account.
Sign into your Microsoft account using the same credentials as you used on your Xbox One. The browser window will automatically close and you'll be returned to the OneCast app.
Click Continue.
Click Connect.

A new window will now open that contains the stream from your Xbox One. By default, it will go fullscreen, but hitting esc on your keyboard will knock it back to a window. From there you can change the size by clicking and dragging the borders, or you can return to fullscreen by hitting the green Maximize button in the top-left corner of the window. If you'd like to stop the stream, just hit the red Close button, also in the top-left corner of the window.

How to change gamertags

If there's more than one profile associated with the Xbox One, you can easily swap between them right from the OneCast app. From here, you can also change a few settings before enabling the stream.

Click the dropdown menu.
Click a profile. In this case, there's only one because there's only one profile associated with the Xbox.
Click the dropdown arrow.
Click the dropdown menu next to Video quality.
Click a quality. You can test out what works best for you based on your internet speed and connection quality.

The Manual local IP address and WAN network host options can be ignored unless you plan on trying out remote play with OneCast.

How to connect your Xbox One controller to your Mac

OneCast works just fine if you have your Xbox controller connected straight to your Xbox One. You can continue using your headset plugged into the controller, and you'll receive haptic feedback.

If, however, you're too far away from your Xbox One for a solid controller connection — whether trying out remote play or in a far corner of your home — you can connect the Xbox controller straight to your Mac with either Bluetooth or a USB connection. If you indeed go with this option, keep in mind that a headset plugged into the controller will lose the use of its microphone and you also won't get any haptic feedback.

For Bluetooth-enabled Xbox One controllers, you can connect as you would any other Bluetooth device. Click the Bluetooth icon in the top-right corner of your Mac and choose the controller from the list.

For controllers that connect with USB, you must install an Xbox controller driver. Luckily, it's included with OneCast and only takes a second to install.

Click Controller.
Click Install the Xbox One controller USB driver.
Click Continue.
Click Continue.
Click Continue.
Click Install.

Testing and my opinion of OneCast

I initially tested OneCast using a regular Xbox One connected to my router with an Ethernet cable, and a late-2015 iMac (Intel Core i5, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9) running macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and connected to my router on the 5GHz band. Both the Xbox One and iMac were in my office, located about 30 feet away from the router, and I chose the Very High video quality option before launching.

With Cuphead, a game that requires precision movements and perfect timing, I noticed virtually no latency issues. I felt like I was playing the game with the Xbox One connected to my TV, and I was just as good (bad) at the game here as I am with a regular setup.

Using the same hardware I ran a second test, this time with my Xbox One using a wireless 5GHz connection rather than a wired connection. The iMac also stayed on the wireless connection, and I again tried out Cuphead with the Very High video quality setting. This time the fact that I was streaming was a bit more noticeable, but the game remained entirely playable.

For a final test, I ran Titanfall 2 multiplayer with both devices using wireless connections. This time there was some noticeable latency, and when I tested again with a wired connection to the Xbox One, the same issues appeared, though slightly less evident. This was no doubt due to the Xbox One having to deal with the game's multiplayer connection as well as the connection to my Mac. The fact that the game requires a bit more power to run than Cuphead likely has something to do with it as well.

The bottom line here? OneCast works as well as the Windows 10 streaming equivalent but still suffers from some of the same issues. Multiplayer games that require precision — like most racing games and first-person shooters — can be played but might ultimately cause frustration, but otherwise, you should be satisfied with what OneCast offers.

Using OneCast over the open internet

Using OneCast locally with your Xbox One and Mac connected to your router is one thing, but connecting when you're away from home over the internet is entirely different. It is possible, but OneCast doesn't recommend it and I wasn't able to test it.

The process involves a bunch of extra steps that, honestly, don't sound like they're worth it. Even OneCast says that the hit to performance will likely make your games unplayable. The in-app manual has a bunch more information about using OneCast over the open internet if you wish to give this method a shot.

Have you tried OneCast?

Have you had a chance to test out OneCast? Which games did you try, and how did they work on wired vs. wireless connections? Be sure to let us know in the comments section!

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Fishing time

Games To Play On Mac

C.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July

There are four Fishing Tourneys each year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Here's when they are and what the rules are for participating.

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Let us know in the comment below!

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

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