The Portingkit

Porting Kit Installation Guide
Thank you for using the free Porting Kit app to play your favorite games and apps! In order to use this software you have to need Mac OS 10.13.x and above. Yes, the software works also for Mac OS Catalina 15.4+ and Big Sur and Higher. Let’s get started.

Tutorials: Check this page… for videos about installing games and about what Porting Kit is/does.

Downloading the Software:
You can download the Porting Kit app from the portingkit.com website up here: http://portingkit.com/download

Installation
After downloading the software you have to unzip the app and move it to your apps/application folder. This last part is important because of permissions for updating the app.

When that’s done, you can launch the app!

How to use Porting Kit
When you have opened the Porting Kit. Then you will find a few tabs.

News: Simply the blog page of paulthetall.com.

Library: The main tab to use! Here you find the game ports database. Search the database for the game  you want. When you cannot find it use part of the game name. When still not there, then the game is simply not ported yet. In that case request it on the request list in the forum/community tab. We always try to bring as much Windows games to the Mac, so you can play it without needing Windows.

Rankings: Here you find a list of; “Latest ports”, “Most popular ports” and “Highest rated ports”. This is especially handy to see when and which new games have been added.

Community: This links to the Porting Kit forums.

Help: Contains FAQ tab, Contact form and Donate tab.

The Game Database!
On the Library tab you will find all the game ports. Search the specific game port and if you cannot find it (always try to search with word parts as well), then you can try making a port yourself using the “New Custom Port” icon and choose an Engine to use. WS11WineCX19.0.1 is the most common one to use (not the 64bit one). An important not is that a custom port of your game is not always working. As mentioned earlier, you can do a request for it on the forums.

For games in the database we offer support. This means, if you run into trouble we will try to help you out. In that case use the forums or contact form to contact us. No assurances of course, because there may be many factors causing the trouble, like old/not powerful videocard, specific 3rd party software installed on the Mac, too less memory, too slow Mac, etc. But in the basis most of the stuff simply works.

Port Database View:
When you found your game in the database, left click on it to get into the Port Database View.

Important in this view to mention is the “source” in the right upper corner. Those sources are tested and available in Porting Kit.We work with 5 Different sources:
1. GOG.com
2. Steam
3. UPlay
4. CD
5. Origin (broken at the moment)
6. Other

To be able to play the game you need to own the specific source game. For Steam you need to own the Steam game, for GOG, you need the GOG installer files.

Before you install you first need to read the port description and notes mentioned. This is important, because sometimes it mentions that a powerful Mac is required and if you have a low-end Mac, than the game will not work of course. I will mention below the install instructions for the Steam, GOG.com and the Uplay installations.

Basic Portingkit Install Instructions GOG games:
1. Make sure you have downloaded/moved the Portingkit app into your Application/apps folder.
2. Always read the “notes” of the game description first for additional steps!
3. Download the “Gamename“offline backup setup” file(s) into your (root) download folder.
4. Go to the library server tab and select the game you want to install and click “Install”
5. Portingkit will create the wrapper and locate your setup file in your download folder
6. The installation of the game will start, run through the install wizard.
7. After installation, exit the installer (don’t run launch the game).
8. Porting kit will say it has finished successfully.
9. Go to your local library tab and select the game and click “play”!
10 Enjoy the game!

Install instructions Steam:
1. in Portingkit click install when the game is selected. This installs the Windows Steam client.
2.  After install. Close the install wizard properly.
3.  Click play to launch Steam. Login with your Steam account.
4.  When you own the game already in Steam, click install in your game library. If not use the links                            
     in the port description to get it cheap.
5.  After download click play! Have fun!

Uplay install Install Instructions
1. in Portingkit click install when the game is selected. This installs the Windows Uplay client.
2.  After install. Close the install wizard properly.
3.  Click play to launch Uplay. Login with your Uplay account.
4.  When you own the game already in Uplay, click install in your game library. If not use the links                            
     in the port description to get it cheap.
5.  After download click play! Have fun!

In the “more” button options you can find some extra port instruction video’s to see how the installation process functions.

Local installed apps!
Then you will find a column at the left where al your installed and locally added apps are located. Including an “Add application” button, where you can add apps manually to the Porting Kit. Also a slider is located on the right bottom where you can enlarge the icons in the game database or make them smaller. When you launch  Porting Kit for the first time, that part is empty. When you installed some games it will shown on the left side.

Important to know is the difference between the local installed apps and the database (not installed apps). Database apps are the ones you can install. The local ones are the ones already installed and when you right click them you have different options: Like “play”, “remove”, “properties” and so on.

You can also change the view to the local port view when you left click on a specific local installed port. You will notice a “play” button to launch the game and a “more” button with extra options.

The “port view” is shown in the picture above. You will notice the “source” is the harddrive. You can rank the game with stars how well it runs for you. In the “more” button with the collapse triangle, you find more options where walk through quickly:

Show in finder: Shows the port/app in the finder.
Delete: Will delete the port.
Force close: not really necessary, but if the processes doesn’t close somehow you can force quit it. Same option can be found in the porting kit top bar menu by choosing “tools” —> “kill all wineskin processes”.
Properties: Gives you some extra options for the port to use for example the F1-f12 keys within the game or changing fonts, or paths or adjustment of the game name.
Configure joystick mappings (as what it says)
Open: C / Z: Important feature which opens the port and shows you the fake “C: drive” within the port where the installed game is located. If you need to find or replace files. Use that option.
Install Mod/patch: Little tool to install a MOD or patch in that specific game port.
Debug: Important feature, when a port is not working for you. We need a debug log to find out the problems you have. So when contacting us, please also supply a debug log so we can find out what’s going on.
Wineskin tools: Opens op the wineskin app with it functions to for example change settings in there. Or to install specific Winetricks, giving port details and more. In some situations we can sent you instructions to do some stuff in there to fix things.
Export to WSI2/WSI3: This option is for the advanced user who created it’s own port and wants to share the port to be added to Porting Kit. They can sent a WSI file to use so we can import it into Porting Kit.
Other Porting Kit options!

Well that are basic installation and usage options explained. But that’s not it. Porting Kit has also some preferences and extra options you can find in the top bar. menu.
In the main menu, the most important features you will find:

Preferences:
You will find there preferences for path settings, screen capture options and the theme/layout GUI settings. It has some cool themes to choose from.

Tools: In that submenu you will find:
1. Kill all wineskin processes
2. Clear Porting Kit Caches (Use this to clear caches and fix problems. When you run into it.)

All extra cool features you can use in Porting Kit.

We hope to add loads of other cool stuff in the future, but that’s it for now. Porting Kit 4.0 makes great process, after that this user Manual will get a little update.

Enjoy Porting Kit. If you run into issues let us know using the contact form or the forums.

FAQ page you can find here…

8 thoughts on “The Portingkit

  1. Man your tool is absolutely insane. I just used it for the first time and I’m super impressed. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll go and try to donate $5 now ;)

  2. installing steambuild dxd11 does not work for me. The installation hangs on “creating wine prefix”. It just gets stuck indefinitely.

  3. Hi,

    The tool seems very useful for mac users! However, I am getting an error message while trying to download any app in the tool. Any advice?

    “Failed to download WSI3 file. Please try again later.”

  4. Hi there!

    I’m absolutely thrilled with Porting Kit! I was wondering, do you have any plans to release a version that supports playing “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Upgrade”? It would be fantastic to have this option.

    Thanks a bunch!
    Romy

  5. Hi,
    I have been experimenting with my Skyrim SE Installation via PortingKit on an Intel Macbook (MacBookPro11,5 with discrete Raedon R9 M370X) to make modding work.

    Up until now, I can only make use of Wrye-Bash, but was able to make use of a rather nice modlist. It is crazy, how nice an smooth the rescoures of the modding community can make the game able to run on my old hardware!!!

    It’s quite a hustle, though, to prepare the installation, for example getting vstools2019 and its dependencies up and running, finding out wich pyhton and pip versions work with the latest Wine Engine takes lots of trial and error. Also, you have to remember to change the steam folder to a location outside of program files (x86) etc.

    Ideally, modorganizer2 shoud work, they support wine. But making the lates qt (6.5) work, is beyond my limited understanding. Also, wether fnis is working within a given wrapper or not is hit and miss in my case. Wrye-Bash is great, but without a working mod manager, you have to be SO carefull not to break your game, since just setting up a new wrapper alone takes half a day.

    All that said: Would it be feasible to create a modding-friendly wrapper, that is prepared in a way that modorganizer2 would work out of the box? Perhaps prepared for Games, modorganizer2 supports?

    If you are open to the Idea, I could send you a list of necessary steps as well of unsolved problems, I ran into.

    Skyrim is the mother of all modded games, content and possibilities are huge with this one. It would be SO nice to make that part of the gaming experience accessible via PortingKit.

  6. If I have Rome Total War 2 Emperor edition, will this work with Rome Total War 2 in the database? It is saying I do not have this game in my Steam Account so my guess is I will need to grab the standard edition?

  7. Will Red Alert 2 which has just been updated to Steam be used via the porting kit?

  8. Tried to port SolidWorks 2023 but it says it does not run on Windows 8. How do I create a Windows 10/11 port?

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