exe files can also contain various other data, such as program icons. Pretty much every program has one or more executables to start it, as such it is probably one of the most used file formats. These files can be found in 16-bit, 32-bit as well as 64-bit versions.

There are several versions of this file format, but all serve the same purpose - to start a program.ĮXE format was, and still is utilized in many operating system, including MS-DOS, Windows, OS/2, OpenVMS and others. I don't think you want to turn your Windows executable into a macOS disk image.The exe file extension is traditionally used for program executable file since the time of first DOS. dmg files are disk images, kind of like a. exe in Wine targeting macOS.īy the way, macOS executables either have no filename extension, or they are specially-formatted directory trees with the '.app' extension (a.k.a. But Wineskin only runs on macOS and I don't know of anything like it for Windows or Linux that could wrap a Windows. exe and wrap it in a Wine environment that you can copy to other Macs, and I don't think the other Macs have to have Wine installed I think the Wineskin wrapper contains all the necessary Wine files. There's a software package for macOS called Wineskin that lets you take an arbitrary Windows. Wine tries to provide an environment where Windows apps can run under Linux or macOS, including tons of libraries implementing Windows APIs which do not exist on Linux or macOS. exe in macOS without a VM, you would need Wine. They call functions that are specific to Windows and often have no direct macOS equivalent.

How to open .exe files on mac