How to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Hearthfire on Mac

PlatformsComputer

Game summary

The Elder Scrolls V: Hearthfire is the second official add-on for the fifth installment in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim. Hearthfire focuses around purchasing land and designing, building and maintaining a homestead. The option to hire stewards, carriage drivers and a personal bard are also available. With five pre-built purchasable houses already present in Skyrim, it's now possible to own property in every hold, except Winterhold. In addition, an adoption mechanic has been introduced that allows the Dragonborn to adopt children and raise them in the newly built home, provided there is room for them. In addition, previously bought homes can be altered to have a children's bedroom fitted into them.
First released: Sep 2012

Play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Hearthfire on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Hearthfire on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Hearthfire installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Hearthfire like you would on any PC.
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