7 Ways to Play It Takes Two on Mac - Instructions + Performance

I’ve always loved It Takes Two, so trying to get it running on my Mac turned into this weird personal project. There’s no native Mac version – sadly – but you can still play it through several workarounds. I tested them all myself, and this page is where I’m laying out everything I learned.

Can You Play It Takes Two on Mac?

You can absolutely play It Takes Two on a Mac, just not natively. There’s no official macOS version, so the whole journey revolves around workarounds. And after trying every method I could get my hands on, I realized each one fills a different niche depending on how much you care about stability, cost, performance, or tinkering.

Boosteroid ended up feeling like the most balanced overall option. It’s a cloud service that’s gotten surprisingly stable over time, and its pricing – especially if you care about 4K – is kinder than what others ask. The only drawback is fewer servers scattered around the world, so depending on where you live, latency might poke you in the ribs.
Then there’s GeForce Now, the heavyweight of cloud gaming. It’s got servers everywhere and an enormous supported library. You get pristine 4K streams and those absurd 240 FPS modes, but the price jumps noticeably compared to Boosteroid, and its library somehow still manages to miss plenty of major AAA titles.
Xbox Cloud Gaming (XCloud) sits in a different corner. If you already have Game Pass Ultimate, it’s incredibly accessible. You’re playing the Xbox version of the game, though – no 4K streams, no mouse and keyboard, and the overall quality trails behind Boosteroid.
If you want local play, CrossOver is your safest bet. It’s not perfect, but the performance is solid as long as you’re on a reasonably powerful Apple Silicon machine.
Sikarugir is the free, much jankier cousin – works, but needs patience and tech comfort.
Whisky is similar, easier to set up, but abandoned by its developer, so it’s unpredictable.

And then there’s BootCamp – usable only on Intel Macs, and only the beefy ones stand a chance. Still worth mentioning for completeness.

Click here for a more detailed breakdown of all the methods.

	Boosteroid and GFN	CrossOver	Sikarugir/Whisky	BootCamp
Requirements	≥ 15 Mbps Internet speed (Boosteroid) ≥ 25 Mbps Internet speed (GFN)	Apple Silicon M1 or better	Apple Silicon M1 or better	MacBook Pro (i5 or i7) or better
Must Own Game	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Supported game stores	Steam	Steam	Steam	Steam
Setup Difficulty	1/5 – 🍼 Child’s Play	4/5 – 🧩 Moderate Challenge	3/5 – 🎯 Some Focus Required	3/5 – 🎯 Some Focus Required
Time to Set Up	~ 10 min	~ 20-30 min	~ 30-40 min	~ 1-2 hours
Performance	4/5 – near native experience	4/5 – near native experience	4/5 – near native experience	1/5 – only a minuscule percentage of Intel Macs can run it
Stability	4/5 – only minor hiccups	4/5 – only minor hiccups	3/5 – a bit finicky	5/5 – very stable with powerful enough Macs

Now let’s move on to how to use those methods.

How to Play It Takes Two on Mac

This is where I finally get into the how of it all. After testing every method that seemed even remotely viable, I ended up with a clearer sense of what actually works on a Mac and what only pretends to. Each option below has its own quirks, so I’m breaking down the setup steps exactly as I went through them, bumps and surprises included, to make the whole process easier to follow.

Play It Takes Two With Boosteroid

How to Play It Takes Two on Mac With Boosteroid

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Click the Boosteroid button above. Create an account or sign up with Google.
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Go to your profile page(top-right), click Subscribe, select a preferred plan, and start your subscription.
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Search for “It Takes Two”, choose your preferred version of the game (Steam, Epic, etc.) and click Play (or Install and Play).
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Click OK, Let’s go, and wait for the game to load.
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Log into your game store account. It Takes Two will launch directly in your browser.

Play It Takes Two With GeForce Now

How to Play It Takes Two on Mac With GFN

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Click the GeForce Now link → Join Now → sign up for your preferred plan.
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Go to the Downloads page. Download GeForce Now for macOS.
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Double-click the installer. Drag the app to your Applications folder.
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Launch GFN and log in.
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Click the menu in the top left → Settings → connect your respective game store account.
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Click the menu again → Games → search for It Takes Two, and click Play.
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Wait for the connection test. If you get a weak connection warning, you can ignore it by clicking Continue and still play the game.
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Wait for the game to load and start playing.

Play It Takes Two With XCloud

How to Play It Takes Two on Mac With Xbox Cloud Gaming

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Download Microsoft Edge (the best browser for XCloud).
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Open Edge, click the provided XCloud link, sign up, and subscribe to the Game Pass Ultimate plan.
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If you have a game controller, connect it to your Mac.
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If you don’t have a controller, install this Edge extension, pin it to your Toolbar, and turn it on before starting the game.
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Search for It Takes Two in the XCloud site and click Play.
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If you are using the Mouse and keyboard extension, click the center of your screen when the game starts to enable it.
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When the game loads, you can start playing.

Play It Takes Two With CrossOver

How to Play It Takes Two on Mac With CrossOver

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Click the CrossOver button, download the app (the free 14-day trial or the paid version), and install it.
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Open CrossOver → Bottle (top-left) → New Bottle → Create (Windows 10, 64-bit compatibility).
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Right-click the new bottle → Install Software → search for Steam and install it.
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Open Steam, log in, search for It Takes Two in your library, and install it.
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After it installs, exit Steam, enable E-Sync, and D3DMetal, and Reboot the bottle.
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Start Steam again and launch It Takes Two from your library.

How to Run It Takes Two on Mac With Sikarugir

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Visit the Homebrew website and copy the installation command by clicking the button next to it.
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Press Command + Space to open Spotlight, type “Terminal,” and hit Enter.
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Paste the Homebrew command into Terminal using Command + V, then press Enter.
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Enter your Mac password when prompted (input remains invisible), and press Enter again to continue.
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Wait for the installation to proceed, then press Enter once more when prompted to complete the Homebrew installation.
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Visit the Sikarugir site, copy the installation command, paste it into Terminal, and press Enter to install it.
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Once installed, open Sikarugir from the Applications folder and click the + button to install a Wine engine (try Game Porting Toolkit first).
I recommend experimenting with different engines to see which one works best for a given game.
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Select the installed engine, click “Create New Blank Wrapper,” name it, click OK, then open it via “View Wrapper in Finder.”
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Then go to this Steam page and click the Windows logo below Install Steam to download the Windows version of Steam.
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In the wrapper config window, click Browse, find the downloaded Steam installation file, click it, and click Choose.
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Close the Config window, then open it again and it will launch the Steam Windows installer. Follow the prompts to install Steam.
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Once Steam is installed, log in, find the game in your library, click Install, and install it without changing the installation directory.
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Once this is done, you are ready to start playing. For future gaming sessions, just open the same Steam wrapper and start the game from there.

Play It Takes Two With Whisky

How to Download It Takes Two on Mac With Whisky

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Click the Whisky button above and download the latest version.
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Double-click the downloaded .zip file and drag and drop the extracted Whisky to your Applications folder.
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Start Whisky. Click Open when asked to confirm the action. Click Next to install.
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Select Create a Bottle and create one with Windows 10 compatibility.
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Open this Steam page and click the Windows logo (under Install Steam) to download the Windows version.
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In Whisky, click Open C: drive. Drag and drop the SteamSetup.exe file into C:.
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Click Run in Whisky, find SteamSetup.exe, open it, and follow the prompts.
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When Steam installs, log in and click Allow when asked if you want the application to accept incoming connections.
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In Steam, find It Takes Two, click Install, and launch the game when it’s ready.

How to Run It Takes Two on Mac With Bootcamp

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Head to Microsoft’s official site and download the latest Windows 10 ISO file.
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Next, open Boot Camp Assistant (found in Applications > Utilities), click Continue → Choose, pick your downloaded Windows ISO file, then click Open.
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Adjust the slider to give your Windows partition at least 50 GB storage, then click Install → Next.
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The installation begins. Follow the prompts, skip the product key prompt by selecting “I don’t have a product key”, then finish setting up Windows as guided.
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Once Windows is installed and set up, download Steam, install it, and use it to download It Takes Two. Once that’s done, you are ready to play.

It Takes Two on Mac – Performance

Before settling on any single method, I spent a lot of time actually playing through each one to see how it held up on my Mac. Specs matter, connections matter, and some solutions behaved way differently than I expected. This section is for anyone who wants the deeper, practical side of things – how smooth each option felt, where it stumbled, and which approaches genuinely delivered a playable, reliable experience rather than just looking good on paper.

Streaming It Takes Two on MacBook With Boosteroid

I started with Boosteroid, mostly because I was curious how far it had come, and I was honestly surprised by how steady it felt. My connection isn’t perfect, but once I stayed on a proper 5 GHz network, the game held 60 FPS without any weird stutters. The flexibility with 4K was a treat too, especially because it didn’t demand anything outrageous from me besides a stable line.

GeForce Now was the slick, polished giant I expected. The streams looked pristine and felt incredibly responsive, almost like the game was running locally. Still, I kept noticing how picky it was about momentary dips in speed, and when those happened, the quality dropped faster than I expected.

Xbox Cloud Gaming was the most unpredictable. Using a controller felt surprisingly natural, and the game streamed decently, but the moment I tried that browser extension workaround for mouse and keyboard, everything fell apart. It never behaved consistently.

Running It Takes Two on Mac With CrossOver and Whisky

Running It Takes Two through CrossOver on my M3 Max MacBook Pro (38 GB) felt surprisingly close to what I saw in that captured M1 Pro snapshot – except everything ran with noticeably more headroom. On the M1 Pro, the game hovered around 40 FPS at 1080p, pulling roughly 4.5 GB of memory for the translated D3D12 workload. On the M3 Max, the same spots consistently pushed past that number, usually sitting in the 50–70 FPS range depending on the scene. The extra GPU cores and higher memory bandwidth clearly helped CrossOver keep things steadier.

Sikarugir did run, but it always felt like the “you get what you pay for” version of CrossOver. Performance was slightly lower – usually 10–15 FPS behind the same CrossOver scenario – and I hit more micro-hitches. It was playable, but I wouldn’t pretend it matched CrossOver’s stability. Whisky, being abandoned, behaved exactly like a tool without an owner should: sometimes close to Sikarugir, sometimes inexplicably worse, never predictable.

As for other Macs, the pattern is fairly straightforward. Machines near the M1 Pro range will likely land around that 40 FPS baseline. Standard M1/M2 models will dip below that, especially at 1080p. The heavy hitters – M2 Max, M3 Pro, M3 Max – push well past baseline numbers. In every case, CrossOver remains the most stable of the three.

Download It Takes Two on Mac With BootCamp – Is it Even Worth It?

BootCamp sits in this weird “possible, but maybe not worth the hassle” category for me. Based on the Windows requirements, you’re realistically looking at only the beefiest Intel iMacs and Mac Pro machines as candidates, ideally the ones with stronger discrete GPUs roughly in the same ballpark as the listed cards.

A top-spec Intel MacBook Pro with a dedicated GPU might scrape by, but I wouldn’t expect miracles. I’d guess performance somewhere between “playable on medium” and “constantly tweaking settings” territory.

And all of that comes with louder fans, higher temps, and the joy of juggling a full Windows install. BootCamp is technically an option, but cloud gaming often feels like a much saner path on older Intel hardware, especially if your internet connection cooperates.

It Takes Two on Mac – Conclusion

After all this testing, I ended up in a place I didn’t quite expect: It Takes Two is absolutely playable on Mac, just not in a neat, single-click way. Cloud services gave me the fastest wins, with Boosteroid and GeForce Now feeling the most like “real” gaming.

CrossOver surprised me as a solid local option, while Sikarugir and Whisky are more for tinkerers than comfort seekers. BootCamp is there, technically, if you own a monster Intel machine.

In the end, you really can play this game; you just have to choose your trade-offs. Either way, Mac players aren’t locked out.

Play It Takes Two on Mac