BEE2.4 on macOS

With Portal 2 no longer able to run natively on macOS Catalina onwards, official support for BEE2 on macOS was discontinued with version 4.37 in 2020.

However, given that you're here in the first place, we're assuming you already have some way of playing Portal 2 on macOS and are now wondering how to use BEE2 with it. This page details the options you have.

Keep in mind that since no one on the BEE2 team uses macOS anymore, this page is largely written based on information from community posts and assumptions based on how BEE2 works on other platforms. If you are a macOS user who has a working BEE2.4 setup that isn't already described here, please edit the page to add information about it!

Windows compatibility software

If you're running the Windows version of Portal 2 through CrossOver, the Windows version of BEE2.4 will not currently work. This is because CrossOver is based on Wine, which currently fails to run BEE2.4 due to a compatibility issue with a core library we use.

If you must use CrossOver, you can try using BEE2 version 4.40.2 from 2021, which was the last version to not use the problematic library. Note however that this is not supported, this version will be missing features and may contain bugs which have since been fixed.

Other compatibility software like Parallels might be able to run newer versions, but we don't currently have much data on this.

Running on Mojave

If you are (for some reason) still running the native version of Portal 2 on macOS Mojave, you'll need a native version of BEEmod to go with it.

Using an old version

The easiest option is to use release 4.36.0 from 2019, which was the last version to officially support macOS. Again, note that this is not supported and there will be bugs that have since been fixed - including two that may make the setup process difficult:

• On startup you might receive an error about a file called basemodui.txt. Valve broke the syntax of this file in an update, which crashes older versions of BEE2. To fix the problem, you'll need to fix the syntax error yourself. Navigate to your Portal 2 folder, open portal2_dlc2/resource/basemodui_english.txt (regardless of your language), and add a single } on a new line at the end of the file.
• Some users have additionally reported being logged out when attempting to add a game. The reason for this is unclear, and the only known workaround is to bypass the game adding process by creating/editing games.cfg manually. You might also be able to add the game using an old version of BEE2 where this works, then update to v4.36.0 and carry the config over.

Building from source

Although we stopped providing Mac releases, we've never gone out of our way to remove Mac-specific code from the app. Some versions following v4.36.0 might still have enough macOS support to be functional if built from source. However, we cannot guarantee that this is or will continue to be the case, and even if it does work you will likely encounter bugs that are not present on other platforms.

Note that if we ever upgrade to Python 3.14 or later, this will definitely stop working, as support for macOS Mojave is removed in that version.

A final word of advice

If you can, we'd really recommend getting something other than a Mac. It's a highly controlled ecosystem that forces every developer to pay Apple hundreds of dollars to make software people can actually use, while also expecting them to continuously keep said software up to date with the latest technologies or risk getting broken the second they become "legacy" (this is what happened to Portal 2 itself).

Of course we understand that everyone's situation is different, and using a Mac might just make the most sense or be the only option for a lot of people. We'd still recommend getting away from the ecosystem if you ever have the chance, though.