nsfw-ish Skyrim Special Edition - Mac M-Series Guide

[PrettyTale1904]

As requested a quick guide for installing Skyrim on M1/x !
For best experience, use Crossover (DXVK + mSync)

 

Always read the requirements!
A simple guide packed inside a pdf to help Mac M-Series users run Skyrim Special Edition on their Mac with the ability to mod the game at it extent using the best performance possible.
 

• 150Gb Required
• Using dependencies 
• Tweaks 
• Modding tools 
• Everything through Crossover as much as possible
• ENB Series NEEDED (Mod)
• SKSE NEEDED (Mod)
• Address Library NEEDED (Mod)
• And of course My Load Order NEEDED

Load Order

————————MANDATORY———————
 

1. You NEED the Anniversary upgrade.

2. You have to start the game at least ONCE before starting to do this.

3. SKSE and Address Library is mandatory and NEED to be installed before starting to download any other mods.

 

4. *WARNING* For Crossover 24 and above, you need to add "d3d11.dll" to the Crossover overrides to be able to use ENB or it WON’T load in game!

To do that: open Crossover, click on your bottle (ex; Steam) and navigate to "configure Wine" on the right panel, click. Once the window is opened, go to libraries, in the little box write "d3d11.dll" and click on "add" on the right, right beside it. Click "apply" at the bottom and then "OK". Close Crossover and start it again. Enjoy!

————————OPTIONAL———————

1. You might need CAO (Cathedral Assets Optimizer) mod to downscale your textures to 768x768 for my grass to 1024x1024 for better performances. (Optional but recommended for lower end Macs)

2. Translating Skyrim binaries to DXVK/Vulkan instead of DirectX (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/48053). (Optional but recommended)

3. FPS Limiter DLL (https://niftucal.blogspot.com/2018/09/fpslimiter.html?m=1) if you want even better performances. (Optional but recommended)

 

 

 

 

FAQ:

Q: Why do I have holes in my roads???
A: Northern Roads and all the patches need to be the lowest in your Load order at the bottom.

 

Q: My Skyrim is slow, why?
A: Depending on the Mac you are using, performance might be different. You need to use SSE Display Tweaks to reduce those stutters. If using an ENB, put to true "enblite" in the enblocal.ini.


Q: My game crash after 10 minutes.
A: Engine Fixes, SSE Display Tweaks and Power Of Three Settings.
 (Engine Fixes: Go into the .ini file and disable everything except ‘’MaxStdio’’, ‘’SaveAddedSoundCategories’’, SaveGameMaxSize’’.)

(SSE Display Tweaks: Use vSync, Fullscreen and add your resolution like 1600x1900.)

(Powerofthree tweaks: Disable ‘’LoadEditorIDs’’ and ‘’Journaling’’.)


Q: My clothes doesn’t fit or my character is transparent..
A: Run your Bodyslide preset. You have to select your body type and batch build morphs those at the bottom left button, select all and in the next screen chose each new outfit mods you added (with physics if you want to have those) click Ok and it will start processing.


Q: Where are my SAVES !?
A: Crossover saves the files into iCloud Drive or in Documents\Skyrim Special Edition. You should be asked the first time by the OS to access your Document Folder, Select Yes.

 

Q: My ENB gui doesn’t open with return key!
A: While starting the game (if using enb) an ini file will be created called "enblocal.ini". This is where all your settings will be set. 
To use the END key on Mac it’s "fn+Right Arrow".

*As a workaround if it doesn’t work; add "KiLoader" to your load order (an SKSE .dll plugin mod) that allows multi-load of plugins and allow them to communicate together at the startup of the game, this should fix the "issue".*

 

 

 

 

 

Credits:

Bethesda
Apple
CodeWeavers
Pretty-Tale-1904

 

 

 

©2025 PrettyTale1904

*Allowed to share, not to be modified without asking permission first.*

 

Getting Started.rar Steps 1-7.rar

Edited July 27 by PrettyTale1904
Added link and documentation

[zerochi18]

Hey sorry im new to this but where is your modlist ?

 

[PrettyTale1904]

On 4/13/2025 at 8:32 AM, zerochi18 said:

Hey sorry im new to this but where is your modlist ?

 

Hi!

 

its in the description, "Load Order" link :)

[yorikgk]

Hi, first thing first thanks for your guide, it was on many aspect a game changer. But could you consider making something more granular about how you manage to install 1. Enb 2. Community shaders. Thanks by advance.

[PrettyTale1904]

Read everything slowly and carefully

-While starting the game (if using enb) an ini file will be created called "enblocal.ini". This is where all your settings will be set.  To use the END key on Mac it’s "fn+Right Arrow". Which will open the Shader menu.-

I am indeed using DXVK + MSync, other option doesn’t work consistently with enb installed.

If it does say "compiling Shaders" with a black screen when starting the game, it means your enb is working. If it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with your installation. I’m guessing that the binaries didn’t installed correctly. Look a tutorial online.

When you download the binaries from enbSeries, in "WrapperVersion" folder only drag and drop "enbSeries" folder "d3d11.dll" "enblocal.ini" "enbseries.ini" and "d3dcompiler_46e.dll" in your Skyrim root folder. Then inside "Data/texture" from your downloaded enbseries, copy "cubemaps" to "Skyrim/data/texture" and paste it there. All the other files within the WrapperVersion need to be copy/pasted into EnbSeries folder.

Remove all the other files you put there the first time you tried, including your old enbseries folder, it might interfere with your installation.

Download an ENB preset from nexus mods and install the files needed where it goes, always do manually.

Start the game.

Remember to always start Skyrim with SKSE64_loader.exe not Skyrim.exe.

[vndt7]

how do you make wrye bash & pandora engine run smoothly in crossover? & how to actually get the right modlist out of the load order that u've gave out? is there no other faster way to curate all of those mods? thank you.

[PrettyTale1904]

On 5/28/2025 at 6:58 PM, vndt7 said:

how do you make wrye bash & pandora engine run smoothly in crossover? & how to actually get the right modlist out of the load order that u've gave out? is there no other faster way to curate all of those mods? thank you.

You download the latest version of Wrye Bash on nexus and then you use the run command within Crossover to launch it and create a shortcut of the executable. For Pandora there is a version working for Mac but the best way is to use a Windows instance for generating the behaviours. 
For the modlist, there is no current way to have it auto-downloaded, tho, it’s already curated and in order. Unfortunately you have to download them one by one.

[Masonn4k5]

hi, im confused on how to download the mods. Do I have to search them up on nexus individually and download them like that? Or is there an easier way ?

[PrettyTale1904]

Actually no not yet, no auto installer works on Mac (yet) unfortunately.

its a one by one installs (for my mods), but you can always use your own modlist. This guide is especially for modding on Mac and performance optimizations.