free horses

Bit of a noob question here as I've never built an application before until now. I've created a standalone application on my Windows computer, and opens fine on my computer. But upon testing the .exe on my Mac (tried transferring using both hard drive and googledrive and neither worked), as well as my friend's MacBook, it says 'You can't open the application because Microsoft Windows applications are not supported on macOS, or 'Windows Self-Extracting Archive' and refuses to open.

I might be missing something obvious, but I would appreciate any help.

Upon building my application on Windows MaxMSP, it only gives me what file I would want it to be and the directory (i.e. either max collective or an application .exe, which it then puts into a folder).

Hi there,
Bit of a noob question here as I've never built an application before until now. 

standalone-application-won't-open-on-macs-help!

I'm not sure if you are trying to run your standalone as a native Mac app or inside a Windows emulation on your Mac. There are two points that are relevant:

1) You can only run a standalone within the OS in which it was created. So a Windows generated standalone will only run on Windows and a Mac generated standalone will only run on a Mac.

2) The "standalone" is not just one .exe file - the file that consists of your "appname.exe" is actually just a copy of the runtime version of Max according to the OS it is to be run in. In order for the standalone to run, it also needs to be accompanied by the collective "appname.mxf" and any files/folders that it depends on, most notably the "resource" folder.

I believe that there is a way to upload your project to C'74 and have it compiled into a standalone for another OS but I have never used that. The new RNBO package might be able to do that too. Finally, using Enigma VirtualBox is a free way of encapsulating all the required files into a single executable file but you need to be aware of certain methods and limitations in doing so, and that only works in Windows too!

Brilliant thanks so much for your help Andy!!

Standalone Application won't open on Macs? Help!