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Instructions on how to install Magic the Gathering Online on macOS with Retina support.

Installing MTGO on macOS using Wine, and making it look pretty!

The following instructions are heavily inspired by @pauleve. I modified his instructions and then added details about how to make a shortcut and support Retina/HiDPI displays.

Installing MTGO (and Wine and Homebrew and Xquartz and ...)

  1. Install Homebrew by opening Terminal and executing the following command:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
  1. In Terminal, execute the following command:
brew install cabextract
  1. Download and run the Installer for "Wine Development".
  2. Open the "Wine Devel" application, which creates a Terminal window.
  3. In the new Terminal window, execute:
wine wineboot

You may be asked to install Mono and Gecko. Install both.

  1. Again, in Terminal, execute these three commands:
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks
./winetricks corefonts dotnet461 ddr=gdi win7

Follow the instructions. The installation of .Net can take some time and may require you to install multiple versions of .Net (e.g. 4.0, 4.5, and 4.6).

  1. Once complete, execute these two commands in Terminal:
curl -o mtgo.exe http://mtgoclientdepot.onlinegaming.wizards.com/setup.exe
wine mtgo.exe

Adding Retina/HiDPI Support

  1. In Terminal, execute the following command:
wine regedit
  1. A registry editor window will appear. In the tree structure to the left, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Wine and then select Edit -> New -> Key from the menu. This creates a new folder/key, which you should name "Mac Driver".
  2. Open Mac Driver in the tree structure and then select Edit -> New -> String Value from the menu. This creates a new value, which you should name "RetinaMode".
  3. Double click RetinaMode, set its value to "y", and then click "OK".
  4. Close the registry editor and restart wine by typing wineboot into Terminal.
  5. Open Wine's configuration dialog by typing winecfg into Terminal.
  6. Click on the Graphics tab, enter the correct dpi under "Screen resolution", and click "OK". You can find your screen's dpi on Apple Support or via DPI Love.
  7. Restart Wine again by typing wineboot in Terminal.

Playing MTGO

Option 1: Launching through Wine Devel (the gross way)

  1. Open the "Wine Devel" application
  2. In the new Terminal window, execute:
wine mtgo.exe

Option 2: Creating a shortcut (the sexy way)

  1. Open TextEdit and make sure it is in plain text mode (Shift + Command + T).
  2. Assuming you followed the directions above, paste the following into TextEdit:
#!/bin/sh
cd ~
wine mtgo.exe

If you installed mtgo.exe elsewhere, replace ~ with the path to the mtgo.exe file.

  1. Save this file as "MTGO" (or anything, really). The important part is ensuring that you save the file without an extention (uncheck "If no extension is provided, use '.txt'." in the save window).
  2. Open Terminal and execute the following:
chmod +x path/to/file/MTGO

Replacing path/to/file with the path to wherever you saved the file and MTGO with the name of the file.

  1. From now on, all you have to do is double click the file to launch MTGO!
  2. Optional: You can replace the icon for the MTGO file with something nicer.
@atte040
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atte040 commented Mar 14, 2023

Hi thanks for posting this, i've been looking for a way to play mtgo on mac for a while. I'm relatively new to homebrew and wine, so i might make beginner mistakes following the instructions. I've failed to install mtgo via "usual" use of wine because of the 32/64 bit problem. My Macbook i running Ventura 13.1. wich how i understand doesn't support programmes that run on 32 bit. Is this supposed to be the work-around to that problem? Unfortunately, the "wine wineboot" command is not working as i get a "command not found: wine" error. Can you help me here? Thnks in advance :)

@elwans
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elwans commented Apr 2, 2023

Hi thanks for posting this, i've been looking for a way to play mtgo on mac for a while. I'm relatively new to homebrew and wine, so i might make beginner mistakes following the instructions. I've failed to install mtgo via "usual" use of wine because of the 32/64 bit problem. My Macbook i running Ventura 13.1. wich how i understand doesn't support programmes that run on 32 bit. Is this supposed to be the work-around to that problem? Unfortunately, the "wine wineboot" command is not working as i get a "command not found: wine" error. Can you help me here? Thnks in advance :)

Hi, I'm also on Ventura 13.1. Unfortunately, Apple stopped supporting 32 bit applications with macOS Cataline 10.5. Depending on the version of wine you've installed, you should be to use 'wine64' instead of 'wine'. So, instead of 'wine wineboot', execute 'wine64 wineboot'.

Hope this helps.

@Coloro1985
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for the M1 does it work also?

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Oct 30, 2023

Everything works great except one thing: The card, avatar, and most of the images don't appear on the app and the respective image folders are empty. Do you have any idea what could be causing this? I tried reinstalling multiple times without success

Edit: I used version 5 of the download link instead of the newest one and that worked for some reason. The only other thing i did different was install dotnet724 through control panel and not winetricks as well as installing mtgo through control panel.

@kiri-420
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Everything works great except one thing: The card, avatar, and most of the images don't appear on the app and the respective image folders are empty. Do you have any idea what could be causing this? I tried reinstalling multiple times without success

Edit: I used version 5 of the download link instead of the newest one and that worked for some reason. The only other thing i did different was install dotnet724 through control panel and not winetricks as well as installing mtgo through control panel.

@Noah40 do you mean for the Wineskin download link? How do I find version 5 instead of 5.7?
thx

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Nov 14, 2023

@kiri-420 you should download the latest version of wineskin. The earlier version is for the setup.exe for mtgo. Ill link it here: https://mtgo.patch.daybreakgames.com/patch/mtg/live/client/setup.exe?v=5
forgot to mention im also using wineskin winery and not wine-devel in my previous comment lol

@kiri-420
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kiri-420 commented Nov 15, 2023

@kiri-420 you should download the latest version of wineskin. The earlier version is for the setup.exe for mtgo. Ill link it here: https://mtgo.patch.daybreakgames.com/patch/mtg/live/client/setup.exe?v=5 forgot to mention im also using wineskin winery and not wine-devel in my previous comment lol

@Noah40 damn. should i try winery? I am lowkey new to using the console and just fiending to use magic on my mac.
Thank you for the link - I tried it with above instructions and it opened the wine browser and said: Error code: 0x80004005

this command also had trouble loading, so maybe thats the issue (?):
./winetricks corefonts dotnet461 ddr=gdi win7

it comesd out with
warning: taskset/cpuset not available on your platform! fatal error: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/lipo: can't open input file: wine (No such file or directory)

and a bunch of BS below

@Coloro1985
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Coloro1985 commented Nov 15, 2023 via email

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Nov 18, 2023

@kiri-420 I was also getting the wine browser when using regular wine so i tried winery and it works great. Just make sure not to install dotnet472 through winetricks but through advanced -> tools -> control panel. Also i dont have m1 so that might affect something

@kiri-420
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@Coloro1985 @Noah40
Thank you guys for all the help.
I just installed wineskin using homebrew from this link: https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer
I used wineskin 2.9.2.0. I have made it to the wine control panel but I am not sure how to proceed with installing dotnet in the control panel, or with mtgo in general

I have a 2017 2.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7 macbook pro running ventura 13.6.1

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Nov 21, 2023

@kiri-420 sorry i havent been able to get back to you sooner, download this https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-framework/thank-you/net472-offline-installer navigate to control panel then add/remove and install the exe then install the mtgo exe through there as well it should look like this when finished Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 12 46 02 AM i can share a tutorial video through google drive if you still need help.

@Coloro1985
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@kiri-420 sorry i havent been able to get back to you sooner, download this https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-framework/thank-you/net472-offline-installer navigate to control panel then add/remove and install the exe then install the mtgo exe through there as well it should look like this when finished Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 12 46 02 AM i can share a tutorial video through google drive if you still need help.

if you can teach me how to do that with a video, I will be glad, cause I can't install, it says I already have the .Net framework installed... (I am in an IMAC)

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Nov 23, 2023

@Coloro1985 i do not know if all these steps are necessary but after i downloaded dotnet462 via winetricks and enabling the win7 option in winetricks settings it worked

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Nov 23, 2023

My steps:

  1. Download wineskin winery, mtgo exe, .NET 472 exe
  2. Create a wrapper in wineskin
  3. Open the wrapper and navigate to winetricks and check the boxes: renderer=gdi, corefonts, dotnet462, win7 this step takes a while
  4. Return to main wrapper menu and navigate to advanced, tools, and then control panel. Select add/remove. Select install and navigate to the .NET 472 exe.
  5. Do the same for the mtgo exe
  6. To clean things up close everything and re-open the wrapper. Select advanced and set the configured exe to the mtgo exe.
    Hopefully nothing goes wrong :) i might do a faq but it is late and i must sleep.

@Coloro1985
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Coloro1985 commented Nov 23, 2023 via email

@kiri-420
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@Noah40 This last fix worked. thank you so much i get to play magic now !

@changkm
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changkm commented Jan 1, 2024

@Noah40 's steps worked great for me, thank you! I'm just having one issue, where I can't always get the menu open on certain cards with multiple options. I can eventually, but I have to click lots of times and it is very slow. E.g. cards with landcycling (from the hand), cards like currency converter or treasure tokens, or scrying. Interestingly, lands and artifacts with multiple colors of mana have no problem. Any ideas what the fix for this might be? I tried with both trackpad and external mouse, same issue. Thanks!

@Noah40
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Noah40 commented Jan 6, 2024

@changkm i also noticed this while playing. I generally right click and then wave my mouse around which still makes it take half a second to appear but better than nothing.

@changkm
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changkm commented Jan 8, 2024

I think i figured out that you need to click and then put the mouse where the menu is going to show up to get it to show up! Thanks again!

@changkm
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changkm commented Jan 14, 2024

Does the sound work for other people?

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