Which macOS is your Mac on?
The steps change to match. Saved on this device only.
What you need
If one of these is a no, it won't convert or won't run.
An Apple silicon Mac
Any Mac with an M chip. All the numbers so far come from one base M1 with 16 GB, and the first outside report, an M2 Pro, converted and started the game. Intel Macs aren't supported.
Not sure which you have? Open the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, and look at the Chip line. M1, M2, M3 or M4 means yes.
macOS 14 or newer
macOS 26 or newer can use the no-Terminal app. macOS 14 and 15 use the Terminal install.
At least 20 GB free
The conversion peaks at about 10 GB and about 4 GB stays once it's done. If the disk falls under 8 GB free, it stops cleanly and picks up where it was next time.
Black Ops II on Steam
Steam for Mac, signed in to the account that owns the game. The launcher asks Steam whether your account owns it every time it starts, and DLC maps play only if your account owns them. Nothing of the game comes with bo2-mac, and this guide can't show you how to get the game files.
About 1 hour 45 the first time
That's on an M1. The campaign is ready to play after about 45 minutes, and Zombies and multiplayer convert when you first pick them. You only do this once.
Download and set up
From the project's own page on GitHub. Nothing to sign up for.
- 1
Know where you're going
bo2-mac lives on GitHub, a free website where people share code and the programs they build. You don't need an account or to sign in to download from it. Only get bo2-mac from its own page. A site offering the game already converted is pirated or malware, and the project says a converted app may never be shared.
- 2
Open the Releases page For macOS 26 or newer
Go to github.com/adrbn/bo2-mac/releases. The newest test build of the no-Terminal app is at the top, marked Pre-release.
- 3
Download bo2-mac.zip For macOS 26 or newer
It's under Assets in the newest test build. Leave the other file, the Unicorn source, alone.
- 4
Unzip it in Finder For macOS 26 or newer
Double-click bo2-mac.zip in your Downloads folder. Use Finder, not the unzip command, which breaks the app's signature. Then open Black Ops II.app. It's signed and notarized by its developer, and macOS may ask you to install Apple's Command Line Tools. Say yes.
- 5
Install Homebrew if you don't have it For macOS 14 or 15
Homebrew is a free tool that installs the programs the build needs. If typing brew in Terminal says command not found, install it from its own website first.
- 6
Get the project and build the app For macOS 14 or 15
Open Terminal, paste these one at a time and press Return after each. The last one builds Black Ops II.app.
git clone https://github.com/adrbn/bo2-mac.git && cd bo2-mac brew install llvm@17 cmake ninja libvpx unicorn pip3 install capstone scripts/make_app.sh --from-source - 7
The three game programs
The converter only accepts the exact Steam build of the game's three programs, checked one by one. It needs them without Valve's SteamStub wrapper, and neither bo2-mac nor this guide shows how to do that. If a file isn't right, the app says so before it converts anything.
- 8
Point it at your game folder and let it convert
Open Black Ops II.app and choose your Black Ops II folder. Leave it converting with the Mac plugged in. The campaign is ready after about 45 minutes on an M1, and you can play it while the rest carries on.
- 9
Play
Black Ops II.app opens the campaign. The CAMPAIGN, ZOMBIES and MULTIPLAYER entries in the game's own menus switch between the three. The first time you load each map, it prepares the graphics for Metal, so that load is longer and the first minute can hitch. After that it's cached.
What you can play
Everything below runs through the game's real menus.
Campaign
51 to 60 FPS. NEW STORY, RESUME STORY and REPLAY MISSION. Every mission loads and hands over to the next, from Angola to the end credits, though not every mission has been played end to end yet. Strike Force missions start with a click.
Zombies
57 to 60 FPS. Six maps solo: TranZit, Mob of the Dead, Nuketown, Origins, Buried and Die Rise (43 to 58 there). Grief and Turned need a second player, so they don't work yet.
Multiplayer
Bots only. Custom Games against bots in eleven game modes. The match rules are the project's own, written from scratch, so they may differ from the original in places.
Controls
Keyboard or DualSense. Keyboard and mouse, or a PS5 DualSense controller. Movement keys follow their place on your keyboard, so AZERTY gets ZQSD, unless you bound them yourself in the game's options.
Window
1280 x 720. The game runs in a 1280 by 720 window.
Heat
Play plugged in. The Mac runs very hot in long sessions (111 to 116 C reported on the M1). On battery, macOS slows the game down hard.
Online
Not yet. No online play, no LAN and no co-op. Zombies and multiplayer talk to a stand-in for the game's servers that runs on your Mac.
If it breaks
Try these in order.
- 1
The campaign stalls on its first video
That's macOS's sound service, not the game. Paste the command below into Terminal. If it takes much longer than about a second to finish, restart your Mac and try again.
afplay -t 1 /System/Library/Sounds/Tink.aiff - 2
The conversion stopped
It stops cleanly if the disk falls under 8 GB free. Free up space and open the app again, and it resumes where it was.
- 3
It says a file isn't the right version
It only accepts the current Steam build. Let Steam update the game, then try again.
- 4
It got slow
Plug the Mac in. On battery macOS throttles the game. The first minute of a new map can also hitch while it prepares graphics, and later loads are smooth.
- 5
Update it For macOS 26 or newer
The app checks for a new release once a day when it opens and offers to install it. An update redoes only what changed, about 3 minutes for a runtime fix.
- 6
Update it For macOS 14 or 15
In the bo2-mac folder, paste the command below. What's already converted is kept, and the conversion resumes.
git pull && scripts/make_app.sh --from-source - 7
Still stuck
Open an issue on the project's GitHub page with your Mac model and the log it names. Never attach game files.
Ask an AI
It's newer than ChatGPT and Claude, so give them this page first.
Copy page brings the whole page with it. Or view it as Markdown.
bo2-mac came out in November 2026, after ChatGPT and Claude were trained. Ask about it cold and they'll answer with CrossOver or Parallels instead. Copy page hands over the whole guide, so paste that first and ask it to stick to it.
Give it your exact Mac up front. The chip, memory, macOS version, which install you used and where it goes wrong.
- It will refuse if you ask how to remove copy protection or get game files. This guide doesn't cover that, and neither does the project.
- Never paste game files into a chat. Paste the lines of the log around the problem instead.
- It may suggest Wine, CrossOver or Whisky settings. bo2-mac doesn't use any of them.
- If it tells you to download a ready-made app with the game in it, don't. The real one never ships the game, so a ready-made one is pirated or malware.
Prompts that work
Pick what you know and copy one. The AI asks for the rest.
Fills in every prompt below and stays on this device. Skip any you don't know, and the AI will ask and show you where to find it.
Before I try bo2-mac, I want to know if my Mac can run it. Before you start, ask me my exact Mac chip, how much memory my Mac has and how much free space I have, one at a time. If I don't know my exact Mac chip or how much memory my Mac has, tell me exactly where to find it on my Mac. Check my answers against what the guide below says you need, and tell me what to expect for speed. Say plainly if you aren't sure.
bo2-mac won't finish converting Black Ops II on my Mac. Before you start, ask me my exact Mac chip, how much memory my Mac has, what the app says when it stops and how much free space I have, one at a time. If I don't know my exact Mac chip or how much memory my Mac has, tell me exactly where to find it on my Mac. Using the fixes in the guide below, give me the first one to try and wait for me to say if it worked.
Black Ops II runs slower than I'd like through bo2-mac on my Mac. Before you start, ask me my exact Mac chip, how much memory my Mac has, which mode and map, whether the Mac is plugged in and whether it's smooth the second time on the same map, one at a time. If I don't know my exact Mac chip or how much memory my Mac has, tell me exactly where to find it on my Mac. Using only the guide below, give me one thing to try at a time.
Questions
Does it cost anything?
Free. bo2-mac is free and open source under the GPL-3.0. That covers nothing of the game, so you still need your own Steam copy.
Can I play online?
Not with this. bo2-mac is offline for now. For online play, Plutonium, the community client for Black Ops II, can run on a Mac through a separate project, plutonium-mac-aio, which uses Wine.
Split-screen?
In progress. The developer is working on local split-screen, which the PC version never had: two copies of the game in one window, one controller each.
Is it an emulator?
No. The game's code is translated to Mac code once, before it starts, so there's no Windows, no Wine and no virtual machine while you play.
Is the download safe?
From the official page. Get it only from the project's GitHub page. The app is signed and notarized by its developer, and it updates only to builds signed by the same developer.
Will Activision take it down?
It could. It's an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with Activision, Treyarch, Microsoft or Valve.
Who made it?
Adrien Robino. One developer, over months, using AI agents for much of the code and checking every result on screen by hand.