Installing and using multiple versions of CrossOver Mac

In most cases, we recommend that customers use only one version of CrossOver, but sometimes the need arises to have two. Note that setting this up is entirely unsupported

Getting more than one copy of CrossOver on the Mac is somewhat easy but comes with some warnings. Some versions of CrossOver will alter the bottle to a state that it may no longer work. If you plan to run more than one copy at a time, we HIGHLY recommend keeping an archived version of the working bottle.

In Applications, change the name of your first install of CrossOver to reflect the version.

  1. Right-click the CrossOver icon and select Get Info
  2. Under Name & Extension, change the name of CrossOver (e.g., CrossOver8.app)
  3. Verify that your application still launches
  4. Install the new version of CrossOver

Please note that the new version of CrossOver will be the default name of the 'CrossOver.app', so if you install an updated version of CrossOver, it will overwrite the changes you make below. The altered version will remain untouched.

The above was the easy part.

It's critical to understand that the old install for this example is 'CrossOver8', and the new install is 'CrossOver'

Open Finder and locate the CrossOver8 icon in Applications.

Right-click the icon and select Show Package Contents.

Open the CrossOver.conf file with a text editor:

/Applications/CrossOver8.app/Contents/SharedSupport/CrossOver/etc/CrossOver.conf

Find the BottleDefaults section and change it to look like this:

ini
[BottleDefaults]
[EnvironmentVariables]
"CX_BOTTLE_PATH"="/Users/{USER}/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/OtherBottles"

Or something similar; basically, you are creating a new place for your new version of CrossOver to look for and create bottles. Note that "{USER}" is a stand-in for your actual user account name.

Save your changes.

When you launch CrossOver it should report that no applications are installed.

Next Step: CD/DVD not detected on application launch

Last modified on 2023-09-28 16:42:37 UTC by Andrew Balfour