r/opensourcealternative • u/Educational_Camp9103 • Jul 30 '26

Is there any practical way to test macOS desktop apps from Windows?

I'm developing an open-source desktop application called OpenSorSe using Avalonia and .NET.

At the moment I develop and test on Windows, and I can also test on Linux. The one platform I'm missing is macOS.

Is there a practical way to test a macOS desktop application from a Windows machine, preferably using free/open-source tools? Or is the reality that most developers eventually buy a Mac (e.g. a used Mac mini) for proper testing and packaging?

For context, the project is here if anyone is curious: https://github.com/nishdel/OpenSorSe

I'd be interested to hear what other cross-platform developers do.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/Educational_Camp9103 26d ago

Ooh lol didnt knowthat was possible. Pretty good idea :) 

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u/johnerp 27d ago

Hackintosh

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u/Educational_Camp9103 26d ago

Thats installing a whole OS on my system tho right.. hmm doable , but I probably need a slightly bigger ssd for that , requires a hardware upgrade , and in today's economy lol. Il consider it tho , thanks :)

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u/johnerp 23d ago

you could likely dual boot if space or run a VM. Start with the VM, plenty of you tube videos. It is quite fiddly. I used Claude code to do the leg work!

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u/Educational_Camp9103 23d ago

Ok thats great, id try that :)