How to play Dead by Daylight on Mac

Is it possible to play Dead by Daylight on Mac?

Dead by Daylight is a cross-platform bestseller developed and inspired by many horror movies. The multiplayer game collects a vast community of players since 2016. Once started, a group of innocent people drops into a location dedicated to different movies. The most popular one associated with Dead By Daylight is “Friday the 13th” with Jason Voorhees using his iconic machete to hunt down the victims. The purpose of people lies in surviving the horror that endlessly strolls around the area. The exit is locked, so you have to be stealthy and careful whilst finding the escape solutions. Dead by Daylight is not a plotwise game, but a fun way to entertain yourself together with friends. The in-game killers and locations are always updated with new patches adding a bunch of new things to play on. Dead by Daylight also has something to say about graphics – based on Unreal Engine 4 and developed by experienced people will not let you lose the feeling of presence, that something is lurking behind whilst lifting its deadly weapon. Unfortunately, although the game has reached many operating systems so far, it is still yet available on Mac systems. Below, we are going to show the way to fix it and launch Dead by Daylight on macOS despite the odds.

System Requirements

Minimal Recommended
OS: 64-bit operating systems (Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1) OS: 64-bit operating systems (Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1)
Processor: Intel Core i3-4170 or AMD FX-8120 Processor: Intel Core i3-4170 or AMD FX-8300 and higher
RAM: 8 GB RAM: 8 GB
Video card: GeForce GTX 460 1 GB or AMD HD 6850 1 GB Video card: GeForce 760 or AMD HD 8800 or higher with 4 GB memory
DirectX: from 11 version DirectX: from 11 version
Disc space: 50 GB Disc space: 50 GB

Play Dead by Daylight on Mac with Parallels

play Dead by Daylight on mac with parallels

Dead by Daylight game requires lots of PC resources, but if you have a powerful Mac computer (iMac, iMac Pro, or Mac Pro) Parallels Desktop can be a solution. This is software for Windows virtualization on Mac with the full support of DirectX and GPUs. It allows you to install Windows 10 on Mac with a couple of clicks and switch between MacOS and Windows instantly. You can run Windows just like on a regular PC, install Steam and enjoy the Dead by Daylight game on Mac.

Download Parallels Desktop

Note: Recommended devices to run resource-demanding games: MacBook Pro (models with Intel processor, discrete graphics cards, and 16 GB of RAM or more), iMac (models with Intel processor, discrete graphics cards, and 16 GB of RAM or more), iMac Pro (all versions are suitable), Mac Pro (all versions are suitable). Parallels on Mac computers with M1 (M1 Pro, M1 Max) chips may not support recent games. Games that require DirectX 12 and later currently not supported by Parallels.

Play Dead by Daylight on Mac with Boosteroid, Nvidia GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud

Update: Boosteroid or Google Stadia fully support Dead by Daylight! Play the advanced game on an old Windows PC, Mac and Android!

If you have an old Mac, or it cannot satisfy Dead by Daylight game system requirements, there is an easy solution. Cloud gaming provides you with sufficient cloud resources for a fixed fee. All you need is a small client program and a good internet connection starting from 15 MBits/s. There are several great services, that provide such an opportunity, among the best are Boosteroid, Google Stadia or Nvidia GeForce Now. Both services have Dead by Daylight in their game catalog, and you can play on any Mac computer (starting from MacOS 10.10) and even Android!

Try Boosteroid Try GeForce Now
Try Google Stadia Try Xbox Cloud

Play Dead by Daylight on Mac with BootCamp

Note: Mac computers with new Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3 Pro, or M1, M2, M3 Max) currently do not support BootCamp. In this case, please, use the options above to run Dead by Daylight on Mac

This method is simple but time-consuming. If your Mac meets all system requirements above, this is probably the best way to play Dead by Daylight for now. You need to set up a dual boot of Windows and Mac via BootCamp. BootCamp allows users to choose the system to work in on startup, however, you won’t be able to switch between systems like in Parallels. You will need to reboot your machine every time you switch from Mac to Windows and vice versa. Remember that Mac is just a computer, that uses common processors, RAM, disks, and other components. So you can install Windows on Mac by allocating disc space of a minimum of 64 GB (to be able to run Windows and a couple of games). To set up Windows via BootCamp, please, do the following:

For OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later

Mention, that for MacOS versions prior to OS X El Capitan 10.11 you will need to create bootable Windows USB.

  1. Download Windows ISO file
  2. Open Boot Camp Assistant (Go to Applications > Utilities)
  3. Define the Windows partition size, choose downloaded Windows ISO file
  4. Format Windows partition and go through all Windows installation steps
  5. When Windows boots for the first time, follow on-screen instructions to install Boot Camp and Windows support software (drivers)

4 Replies to “How to play Dead by Daylight on Mac”

  1. Hi,

    I installed Parallels, installed steam and DBD, but I got error about unsupported host machine architecture (Arm64)
    So if you know something about that, I would be glad to hear about it. Thanks!

    1. Well yeah you’ve got an M1 (ARM64/Aarch64) Mac. DBD is made for x86_64 architecture (Intel/AMD). Probably won’t run on Windows Insider for ARM64.

  2. Hi, I get an error where Dead by Daylight crashes on my 2019 Intel 15” MBP with boot camp just after the loading screen. I even re-installed windows and get the same error. Any suggestions?

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