Finally, a Mac-compatible online casino
i.e., MacBook, MacOS
Last update: April 2021
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Mac-compatible online casino: Bovada
Their games work right in Safari, with either play money or for real money.
After that, I expected the floodgates to open, with lots of other casinos following suit. They didn't. Bovada was pretty much the only game in town for Mac users for literally years. And although a few casinos have finally added some Mac-compatible games, they're far inferior to Bovada.
So, if you want to play instantly online with a Mac, then Bovada is it — especially if you want to play without having to register an account. Every other online casino I've seen forces you to register before you can play even their free-play games. That's one reason I accept advertising from Bovada and Bovada only. (And, of course, another reason is that their games work on Macs.)
Lots of casinos claim that their no-download games work on Macs, but they don't. They advertise that they do, to get you in the door, and then they don't deliver. Which is pretty stupid — do they think you're going to stick around once you discover the games don't actually work?
As soon as Bovada launched their browser-based games, I put them to the test, starting with blackjack at $25/hand for both play money and real money. Everything I played worked flawlessly right in Safari, very fast, with zero problems. Here's what they've got. (Some of these games are at their sister casino, Slots.lv.)
Bovada has too many slots to list and they're constantly adding more, so visit Bovada to see the complete list of slots.
To save you some time, the best Bovada slots are:
The download version of the software is Windows-only, so Mac users can play only the browser-based games. The advantage of the download version is that you can switch from one game to another very quickly. So Bovada's Mac solution isn't perfect, but it's definitely good enough. And for poker players, you can easily play with Bovada's Mac-compatible web-based poker.
Before Bovada, I can't tell you how many casinos I tried that advertised Mac-compatible Java or Flash games where the games didn't actually work. For example, I couldn't get no-download versions to work from Captain Cooks, Unified Gaming, InterCasino, Sands of the Caribbean (CryptoLogic), or Roman Palace. Strike It Lucky casino finally acknowledged to me via email that their games don't really run on Macs, though months later their website still proudly (and falsely) claims that they do. Fortunately there's now an alternative.
Note a couple things. First, Bovada is the advertiser on this site, so you might consider me biased, but truthfully, I wrote this article about Bovada I don't know of a better Mac-compatible casino that serves most of the U.S. (If you know of one, feel free to let me know.) Second, Bovada isn't without its faults. They're far from perfect, there's just nothing better. (visit Bovada)