Highball
Which renderer to use
Highball can run each game through three different Direct3D translation layers. This is what the database knows for this title — empty rows are open questions, not failures.
| Renderer | Verdict | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| DXVKDirect3D 9-11 over Vulkan | Untested | no report yet — send one |
| DXMTDirect3D 11 over Metal | Recommended | run by Highball on Apple Silicon |
| D3DMetalApple's Game Porting Toolkit | Untested | no report yet — send one |
Last confirmed 2026-10-05. That run predates per-report engine and macOS logging, so those are not recorded for it. A newer report would carry both.
Notes
Plays on engine x64-crossover26.3-r6 or later. The game uses its own Vulkan renderer (through MoltenVK), so the graphics mode setting does not apply to it; keep DXMT for the Rockstar launcher, which needs it. What r6 changes: MoltenVK refused the linear-tiled 3D, mipmapped and array images the game creates (Metal cannot back those with linear memory) and RDR2 exited at 98 per cent of its first load on every earlier engine; Highball's MoltenVK now creates such images with optimal tiling instead, and the game loads in about a minute, reaches its main menu and plays. Tested at 1280x720 windowed (Settings/system.xml under Documents/Rockstar Games/Red Dead Redemption 2, <screenWidth>, <screenHeight>, <windowed value="1" />); fullscreen at the display's resolution is untested. Wine leaves the Mac display at its own size when a game asks for a fullscreen mode; the game page's Advanced panel has Emulate display mode changes, which makes Wine scale such a game to the screen (highball#72). About 34 fps in the prologue snow with the game's Safe preset. Keyboard note: the first key after the window regains focus is ignored by the game, press it again. History, for anyone chasing the other renderer: DirectX 12 through D3DMetal initialises and then faults inside D3DMetal about 30 seconds in (execute fault at 0x20019008070c10 after 'Not implemented'), and <API>kSettingAPI_DX11</API> from some guides does nothing because RDR2 has no Direct3D 11 renderer (it falls back to Vulkan). CodeWeavers' MoltenVK 1.2.10 fork reaches 84 per cent then hits the game's own out-of-memory dialog (1729 host-coherent refusals). All of that is closed by the r6 MoltenVK. Honest playability note (2026-09-12, M1 Pro): the ride reads 40 fps on the Metal HUD but the GPU line sits near 49 ms a frame and the image judders; it runs, it is not comfortable to play here. The Rockstar Social Club overlay (SocialClubHelper.exe, GPU and renderer processes) used about three quarters of a core beside the game. A newer chip has a different GPU budget; reports wanted. Lead, not verified (2026-09-12): in Settings/system.xml, vSync 0 and fsr2Index 2 (FSR 2 balanced) cut the GPU time in the opening cutscenes from about 49 ms to 14 ms and freed the counter from its 39.9 pin; the ride was not re-measured because that run ended in a winevulkan assert (vkGetPipelineCacheData thunk, exit code 3, once in 14 runs here). The Rockstar Social Club overlay's helper processes used about 45 percent of a core beside the game. Measured 2026-09-12 (M1 Pro 16 GB, 0.9.7, r7, MoltenVK frame statistics and vm_stat): the prologue ride decays from about 30 fps to under 20 within a minute because the game's footprint reaches 13.7 GB and macOS starts swapping (free memory under 100 MB, swap-outs of up to 1 GB every 5 s); the GPU is the second wall at 31 ms a frame at 720p with FSR 2 balanced in the snow. Textures Medium, vSync off and FSR 2 balanced help the menus and cutscenes but not the ride. Killing the Social Club overlay helpers frees about a core and does not quit the game. On 16 GB this game is not comfortable; a 24 GB or larger Mac removes the memory wall, reports wanted. Verified with the Steam copy only. The Epic copy launches through a stand-in for Epic's launcher from Highball 0.9.12 and reached the main menu on an M5 Max with the vulkan-1.dll step in knownIssues (reported, highball#93). Epic copy on an M5 Max with 128 GB (reported by danekkalivoda, highball#93, 2026-09-15, engine r8, Highball 0.9.12): a stable 60 fps capped by VSync at 60 Hz in gameplay, borderless at 2880x1620, FSR 2 Quality, Ultra textures, 16x anisotropic, mostly High with reflections, water and volumetrics at Medium. An Xbox controller works. Trees near the player pop in and out at that frame rate; the reporter expects MVK_CONFIG_USE_MTLHEAP=0 as an environment variable to fix it, not yet confirmed. Two things found on 2026-10-02 (highball-db#272). Highball 0.10.2 moved a new player to engine r7, the revision this recipe names, instead of the newest Wine 11 revision, so r7 is what most players of 0.10.2 are on; 0.10.3 offers the newest revision instead. And on engines r11 to r14 the Rockstar Games Launcher installer stops at once with 'make sure all instances of the Rockstar Games Launcher have been closed', on Steam's first run of the game and on Highball's own Rockstar recipe alike, so the launcher never gets installed there; engine r15 fixes that. On r7 the whole chain works here, provided the launcher is installed through Highball (Add games, Rockstar) before the first Play. Frame rate from the 2026-09-12 run on an M1 Pro (engine r6, macOS 26.6.2): about 40 by the counter on the prologue blizzard ride at 1280x720 windowed, but uneven: GPU near 49 ms a frame on the ride, visibly juddery, not what the maintainer would call playable on an M1 Pro (third run 2026-09-12, 0.9.7, engine r7); 55-60 in the menus and the intro montage, 35 in the opening cutscene Steam, Rockstar launcher signs in, first-run prompts (brightness, subtitles, audio), main menu, Story: intro montage, opening cutscene, then the blizzard ride under keyboard control (W moves the horse). Zero faults in two runs of 15 and 12 minutes. Re-checked on 2026-10-05 on an M4 with the Wine 11 engine r15: launcher passed and the main menu reached at 200 s. Rockstar launcher error 113 on an environment moved off the Wine 10 engine came from leftover HKCU\Software\Wow6432Node registry keys, which hide Steam from the launcher's 32-bit lookup. A player found it, and Highball links Steam's key back by itself from the version after 0.10.15. A player on an M5 plays it for almost two hours on the Wine 11 engine r23 with DXVK, with grass, bushes and trees flickering and changing as they move. On an external ultrawide display the game offered only three resolutions, all smaller than the screen, and fullscreen spilled past its edges (highball-db#272).
Known issues
On engines before r6: loads to about 98 per cent, opens a window and exits without a frame (Vulkan), or crashes about 30 seconds in with DirectX 12 selected in system.xml.
What helps use engine x64-crossover26.3-r6 or later and leave the game on its default Vulkan renderer.
Why MoltenVK 1.4.1 refuses linear-tiled 3D, mipmapped and array images (fixed in r6's MoltenVK). D3DMetal answers a D3D12 call the game needs with 'Not implemented' (not fixable here).
One vertex shader fails to compile to Metal (gl_CullDistance emitted into an undeclared struct member) and the driver logs many bytes_per_row assertions during loading.
What helps none needed so far: nothing visibly missing in the prologue. Recorded so a texture glitch later has a lead.
Why SPIRV-Cross's Metal output for cull distance, a known limitation (SPIRV-Cross issue 1403, MoltenVK issue 1484: Metal has no cull distance built-in and the translator emits an array member the output struct lacks), and the row pitch of the game's linear 2D textures.
Epic copy (installed through Highball's Epic support): the Rockstar Games Launcher opens the store page with BUY NOW instead of starting the game (reported on an M5 Max, highball#93)
What helps Highball 0.9.12 starts the game through a stand-in named EpicGamesLauncher.exe, and the reporter then reached the main menu on engine r8 (M5 Max, 1080p ultra) after one more step, copying vulkan-1.dll from Program Files/Rockstar Games/Social Club next to RDR2.exe with a per-program override vulkan-1=native,builtin, which cleared the game's Error 18. The recipe sets the override; the copy is manual for now
Why the Rockstar launcher accepts an Epic entitlement only while a process named EpicGamesLauncher.exe exists, and no launcher runs when Legendary starts the game directly. The launch arguments themselves are passed
Trees near the player pop in and out of view (reported on an M5 Max at 60 fps, Epic copy, engine r8)
What helps none known. Tested by the reporter on an M5 Max (highball#93): MVK_CONFIG_USE_MTLHEAP=0 stops the game from starting (vkCreateImage: MTLHeap must be enabled for 2D-on-3D or block texel view compatible images), MVK_CONFIG_LIVE_CHECK_ALL_RESOURCES=1 starts but the pop-in is worse, FSR off changes nothing, maximum geometry LOD drops below 1 fps. MoltenVK 1.4.2 (engine r10) did not change it either. Do not set MVK_CONFIG_USE_MTLHEAP=0. Turning the game's Tree Tessellation off is untested (highball#261)
Why not measured; the reporter points at MoltenVK's Metal heap allocation
On an 8 GB Mac the game crashes in the intro cutscene at the lowest settings (reported by a Reddit user on an iMac M3 8 GB, 2026-09-25).
What helps none. No setting brings the game under 8 GB, and switching it to DirectX 12 does not help, that path crashes on its own; the game needs a 16 GB Mac or more on this path.
Why memory. On a 16 GB Mac the game's footprint passes 13 GB in the prologue and macOS already swaps, so 8 GB shared between the CPU and the GPU cannot hold it.
On Wine 11 engines r11 to r14 the Rockstar Games Launcher installer stops right after it starts with 'An error has occurred. Please make sure all instances of the Rockstar Games Launcher have been closed', its language page stays blank, and the launcher is never installed, so the game's first run through Steam ends without a launcher (highball-db#272).
What helps engine x64-crossover26.3-r15 (Highball 0.10.3). On 0.10.2, engine r7 does not have the fault, and that is the revision 0.10.2 offers for this game.
Why measured on an M4, macOS 27.0: a Highball engine patch (0011, from r11) wrote the Windows error code back twice on every window callback, so GetLastError() returned a heap pointer after the first display call of a process. The installer reads it right after it measures the display and treats it as a failure. Rockstar's own log shows 'Last error: 22725120 (unknown error)'.
The Rockstar launcher reports error 113, 'Steam failed to initialize. Please verify that the Steam Client is running', when Steam starts the game (highball-db#272, a Discord report on an M2, both on engine r7, Highball 0.10.2, macOS 27).
What helps Highball links the key itself from the version after 0.10.15 (gin fcee4f6). On the first launch after the environment stops it adds a registry link from HKCU\Software\Wow6432Node\Valve to HKCU\Software\Valve, the player's own fix, which they confirmed gets the launcher to its sign-in window
Why found by a player (crêpe on Discord, 2026-10-13). The environment's user registry had HKCU\Software\Wow6432Node keys, left by an early Wine 11 engine's first boot when it was moved off the Wine 10 engine (r7, 2026-09-29). Wine then sends a 32-bit lookup of HKCU\Software into that subtree, which Windows never does, so the launcher's lookup of Steam's keys under HKCU\Software\Valve found nothing and it decided Steam was not running. Reproduced on engines r26 and r23. The M4 test environments never had the subtree, which is why it did not reproduce there
Fullscreen at 1920x1080 shows the picture misplaced and cut off, with black where the rest of the menu should be; windowed borderless at 1080p draws correctly but smaller than a Retina display (highball#261, an M5 with Retina resolution at 100% on)
What helps engine x64-crossover26.3-r21 (Highball 0.10.11 and later) reports the real size: pick it in the environment's Advanced settings, keep Retina resolution and Emulate display mode changes on. 1600x900 fullscreen fits meanwhile. Waiting on the reporter's confirmation (highball#261)
Why with Retina resolution on, Wine 11 engines before r21 reported the screen twice its size through one of the two ways a game can ask (7680x4320 against 3840x2160 on an M4), and a game that sizes its fullscreen picture from that number crops it (highball#261)
One-click setup
Highball ships a recipe for Red Dead Redemption 2: open the game in your Library and apply it. The recipe carries the tested renderer and any per-game fixes, so you don't have to reproduce them by hand. Read the recipe.
Provenance
played here on the Steam copy, M1 Pro, macOS 26.6.2, engine x64-crossover26.3-r6, 2026-09-11 Reported by elliottgartrell-oss (highball-db#469, 2026-10-13), Apple M5 MacBook Air, macOS 27.0.1, Highball 0.10.15, engine x64-crossover26.3-r23, the game on DXVK, rated 4 of 5 after 109 minutes, with grass, bushes and trees flickering, vanishing and changing while moving.
Before installing anything, it is worth checking whether the game already ships a native Mac build.
Common questions
Does Red Dead Redemption 2 work on Mac?
Red Dead Redemption 2 has no native Mac build, but it is reported to run on Apple Silicon through Highball, a free open-source compatibility layer. Highball has run it on Apple Silicon (last confirmed 2026-10-05).
Which renderer should I use for Red Dead Redemption 2?
DXMT. Highball can translate Direct3D through DXVK, DXMT or Apple's D3DMetal, and the right choice varies by game. The database records DXMT for Red Dead Redemption 2, and applying the Red Dead Redemption 2 recipe sets it for you.
Is there a one-click setup for Red Dead Redemption 2?
Yes. Highball ships a recipe for Red Dead Redemption 2 that sets the tested renderer and any per-game fixes. Open the game in your Library and apply it.
Contribute a result
This page is generated from an open database. If you have run Red Dead Redemption 2 on Apple Silicon, working or not, a report takes a minute and fills in the empty rows above. Send a report, or read how the data is put together.