Overview

Whisky provides a clean and easy-to-use graphical wrapper for Wine built in native SwiftUI. You can make and manage bottles, install and run Windows apps and games, and unlock the full potential of your Mac with no technical knowledge required.

Familiar UI that integrates seamlessly with macOS

Debug and profile with ease

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Key Features

• Wine 11.0 - Latest stable Wine with improved compatibility and networking
• DXMT & DXVK Graphics - DirectX 11 through native Metal translation (DXMT) out of the box, with DXVK over MoltenVK as the universal fallback
• Launcher Compatibility - Built-in support for Steam, Epic, EA App, Rockstar, Battle.net, and more
• Controller Support - SDL environment variable controls for gamepad detection and mapping issues
• Stability Diagnostics - One-click diagnostic reports for troubleshooting crashes and freezes
• Native SwiftUI - Beautiful, familiar macOS interface

System Requirements

• CPU: Apple Silicon (M-series chips)
• OS: macOS Sequoia 15.0 or later

Installation

Homebrew (recommended)

brew install --cask frankea/whisky/whisky

This taps frankea/homebrew-whisky and installs the latest signed/notarized DMG. brew upgrade --cask picks up new releases.

The default brew install --cask whisky still installs the archived original (last release April 2025) and always will until that cask is updated. Use the qualified frankea/whisky/whisky form to get this fork.

Manual

1. Download the latest Whisky-X.Y.Z.dmg (signed and notarized — Gatekeeper-approved).
2. Open the DMG and drag Whisky.app to /Applications.
3. Launch Whisky. On first run it downloads the Wine runtime (~330 MB) and sets up your default bottle.

In-app updates are delivered through Sparkle from https://frankea.github.io/Whisky/appcast.xml.

Migrating from the original Whisky

The original whisky-app/whisky was archived on April 9, 2025 with a final maintenance notice. If you're running it today, you're on a stale build with no path forward for new fixes. This fork picks up where the upstream left off — version 3.0.1 shipped 54 requirements covering the 10 categories of upstream issue tracking (#40–#50).

To switch:

1. Install this fork: brew install --cask frankea/whisky/whisky or follow the manual steps above.
2. Open it and choose File → Migrate from the Original Whisky. It finds the bottles the original app left in ~/Library/Containers/com.isaacmarovitz.Whisky/ and imports the ones you pick. Bottles are referenced in place — nothing is moved or copied — so the original app keeps working if you'd like to keep it around.
3. (Optional) Once you're happy, remove the original app: drag /Applications/Whisky.app to the Trash, or brew uninstall --cask whisky if you installed it via Homebrew. Your bottles stay put.

The original app uses a different bundle identifier (com.franke.Whisky here vs. com.isaacmarovitz.Whisky), which is why bottles aren't shared automatically. The old Bottle → Export / File → Import Bottle route still works if you'd rather move bottles by hand or onto another Mac. With no critical bottles, you can skip migration entirely — the new app creates a fresh bottle on first launch.

Uninstalling

Dragging Whisky.app to the Trash (or brew uninstall --cask frankea/whisky/whisky) removes the app but leaves the Wine runtime, your bottles, and app data behind — by design, so reinstalling doesn't re-download ~330 MB or lose your bottles.

⚠️ Back up your bottles first if you want to keep them. Removing the container below deletes every bottle stored in its default location. Bottles you created in a custom folder live wherever you put them — check Bottle → Reveal in Finder before deleting anything.

To remove Whisky completely, delete the app and then these paths (all under ~/Library):

# 1. The app itself
rm -rf "/Applications/Whisky.app"          # or: brew uninstall --cask frankea/whisky/whisky

# 2. Bottles + bottle list (default bottle location is inside this container)
rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.franke.Whisky
rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.franke.Whisky.WhiskyThumbnail

# 3. The Wine runtime (~330 MB) and other app support
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.franke.Whisky

# 4. Caches, logs, preferences, and saved state
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.franke.Whisky
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/com.franke.Whisky
rm -rf ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.franke.Whisky
rm -f  ~/Library/Preferences/com.franke.Whisky.plist

If you also installed bottles in a custom location, delete those folders too. Migrated bottles that still belong to the original app live under ~/Library/Containers/com.isaacmarovitz.Whisky and are left untouched by the steps above.

Telemetry (opt-in)

Whisky sends no data by default. During first-run setup you can opt in to anonymous usage telemetry — a checkbox that is off unless you tick it, and a toggle you can change anytime in Settings → Privacy.

When (and only when) enabled, Whisky sends five events covering the first-run funnel, so the maintainer can see where new installs fail:

runtime_install_started is sent once per setup attempt; the _succeeded / _failed events are sent per install attempt (so retries are counted). The two first_… events are sent at most once per install.

No personal data, file names, paths, raw error text, or identifiers tied to you are ever sent. Events carry a random per-install anonymous ID (reset if you opt out). Every event Whisky can send is the list above, and all of it is declared in one file, Whisky/Utils/Telemetry.swift, with every automatic-capture feature of the analytics SDK disabled and no person profile ever created (identify() is never called). Each event also carries the SDK's standard context — app and macOS version, hardware model, locale, and more; see SECURITY.md for the full list. Like any HTTPS request, PostHog's ingestion sees the connecting IP (GeoIP enrichment is disabled); none of this is tied to your identity.

Documentation

• Support - Where to file bugs and what to expect from a single-maintainer fork
• Governance & continuity - Who maintains this and the honest bus-factor situation
• Runtime dependencies - The bundled Wine/DXVK/D3DMetal/DXMT versions and their upstream sources

WhiskyKit, the core framework powering Whisky, has comprehensive API documentation:

• WhiskyKit API Documentation - Full API reference with usage examples
• Getting Started Guide - Learn how to integrate WhiskyKit
• Architecture Overview - Understand how WhiskyKit components work together

Troubleshooting

• Launcher Troubleshooting - Fix issues with Steam, Epic, Battle.net, etc.
• Steam Compatibility Guide - Detailed guide for Steam on Whisky
• Stability Troubleshooting - Diagnose crashes, freezes, reboots, and kernel panics
• Controller Issues - Enable "Controller Compatibility Mode" in Bottle Config → Controller & Input
• Game Configurations - 80+ curated per-game compatibility configs, also browsable in-app under Game Configurations

Upstream issue audit

Per-issue accounting of how this fork addresses the open issues from the archived upstream repo. Read docs/AUDIT.md for the methodology — including how to read the addressed-direct vs addressed-categorical distinction and what unverified GameDB entries actually mean.

Test coverage

The Coverage badge above is scoped to the whiskykit flag — line coverage of the framework that holds the bottle, Wine, GameDB, and PE-parser logic, measured by swift test --enable-code-coverage per .github/workflows/CI.yml. The blended project-wide number on the Codecov dashboard reads much lower because it averages in the SwiftUI app target, which only receives best-effort UI-test coverage. Read the badge as "WhiskyKit unit-test coverage," not full-app coverage.

WhiskyUITests gives behavioural coverage of the SwiftUI surface (toolbar, create-bottle sheet, fixture-dependent flows). CI now runs them with -enableCodeCoverage YES and uploads the resulting app-target coverage to Codecov under a separate whiskyapp flag (best-effort — the upload never gates CI). Because UI tests exercise far less of the app than the unit tests do of WhiskyKit, expect the app-target number to read lower than the WhiskyKit badge above.

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Credits & Acknowledgments

Whisky is possible thanks to the magic of several projects:

• msync by marzent
• DXVK-macOS by Gcenx and doitsujin
• DXMT by 3Shain
• MoltenVK by KhronosGroup
• Sparkle by sparkle-project
• SemanticVersion by SwiftPackageIndex
• swift-argument-parser by Apple
• CrossOver by CodeWeavers and WineHQ
• D3DMetal by Apple

Special thanks to Gcenx, ohaiibuzzle, Nat Brown, and Isaac Marovitz (original author) for their support and contributions!

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