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Use Wine without Terminal 2: Automator Method

Making Wine feel more at home in OS X

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A lot of OS X users aren't used to poking around in the Terminal, so using Wine, which relies heavily on the command-line, can seem pretty intimidating. So, I've thrown together two different ways that you can use Wine on a day-to-day basis without having to open Terminal.

For the other method, see Use Wine without Terminal 1: ".command" Method.

Creating an Automator application that launches a Windows app with Wine

Here's a video of the process, and step-by-step instructions are located below:

  1. Open Automator.app (/Applications/Automator)
  2. Choose to create an Application at the prompt
  3. Search the Actions box (should be highlighted by default) for "Run Shell Script"
    • This should be visible after typing only a few letters
  4. Double-click the resulting "Run Shell Script" action
  5. At the top of the Run Shell Script box on the right choose to pass input as arguments
  6. Replace the "for f in..." code with the following:
    • DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/X11/lib "" ""
    • In the first set of quotation marks, either type the path of your wine binary (e.g., /Users/you/wine/bin/wine) or drag and drop it from the Finder into those quotation marks
    • In the second set, drag and drop the Windows application you want to launch (or type the complete path)
      • Note: if the Windows application needs to be installed, you should do this only after it's been installed. See the How to use Wine tutorial for more information
  7. Save the Automator project as whatever you want, making sure that 'Application' is selected in the file format dropdown box
  8. Optional: replace the standard Automator application icon with your Windows application's real icon:
    • In Finder, select the application and press command+i; or, right- or control-click the application, choose "Get Info"
    • Select the application image (top-left) and paste your image there or drag an image from Finder on top of the old image

Pros:

  • Makes a proper OS X application (.app) that you can add to the Dock
  • Teaches you about Automator, a great app for OS X
  • Doesn't require the command line at all

Cons:

  • Terminal output is invisible
  • Fairly large (around 500 KB)