Running MetaTrader 4 (MT4) on Mac OS X

Posted on March 6, 2008

Here is how to get MetaTrader4 (MT4) Forex trading platforms to work under Mac OS X.

Requirement: You must be using a Mac with the Intel Duo Core Processor.

1. Download CrossOver
Download a 30-day trial version of CrossOver from CodeWeavers at
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/download_trial_macosx/

(the for-sale version only costs $60).

crossover.jpg

2. Install CrossOver and quartz-wm
At the end of the installation it will request you insert Disk 1 from your Mac OS X install disks which came with your Intel Mac. This is important as a small file (quartz-wm) needs to be extracted from the X11 package. If for whatever reason you don’t see a dialog indicating that this was successfull (happened to me 2x), delete all installed CrossOver files and try again.

3. Create WinXP Bottle in CrossOver
At Configure/Manage Bottles within CrossOver create a new winxp bottle. You can name it anything you want. For here, I’ll refer to it as the winxp bottle. This will create a bottle stored within your user folder (see path below).

4. Copy/Paste MFC DLLs
From within your valid, licensed copy of Windows XP, navigate to the system32 folder and locate the following DLLs: mfc40.dll and mfc42.dll. Copy these to your Mac and then move them to the equivalent WinXP “bottle” within your user folder. The path is username/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/winxp/drive_c/windows/system32/.

5. Copy/Paste wingding Font
To properly show symbols and arrows, locate the wingding.ttf file in your Windows proper installation and copy it to your CrossOver installation in the /windows/fonts/ directory.

6. Install MT4
Download the MT4 installer (e.g. mt4setup.exe) from your broker. I tested using FXDD’s latest MT4 build 205. Double-click on the .exe and it should take you to CrossOver and begin running the MT4 installer the same as you’re familiar with when running on Windows. Select all of the default options for where MT4 will be installed. At the end, de-select (this is important) the option to auto-launch MT4 after installation is completed. (This doesn’t work.)

7. Launch MT4
From within the CrossOver application, go to the Programs menu and then select the MT4 application (it may be within a sub-menu with a symbolic link to the actual terminal app).

MT4 should launch and look just as good as from within Windows! And, MetaEditor launches as well! Check out this screenshot:

mt4-crossover-osx.png

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Make sure the broker you are downloading from still has version build 218 and not 220. Also once you’ve downloaded version 4.00 build 218 don’t update it.

Version 220 has added security and will not work with crossover. (See comment #18 below)

If you can’t find build 218 any more use the link below to download a copy of FXDD’s MT4 Installer.

http://www.mediafire.com/?bjz0gkcoe1j

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92 thoughts on “Running MetaTrader 4 (MT4) on Mac OS X”

  1. As of the Crossover version I downloaded earlier in Jul 2008, I was able to install and run MT4 flawlessly under Crossover. I am using it without problem.

  3. Alan, I am having so much problem with getting Metatrader to work on my Mac.

    I have installed Crossover onto my Mac and Metatrader but when I look for the Metatrader app. I can not find it.. I have now removed Crossover and Metatrader from my Mac becuase I have had enough.

    Can you help?

    Thanks

  5. hello Alan, Nice to know you i dont see any contact form around, so i will comment here, I am wondering if you can cooperate, i am an SEO/SEM but i dont know enough about forex please contact my mail if you are intrested

  6. Yeah I took off the contact details as I was getting a lot of spam. The easiest way to reach me is via my forum http://www.moneyguruforum.com

    userid: alan

    PM me for anything important.

    Ok Sir, I will shoot you an e-mail. I’m not too sure what you have in mind, but I guess I’ll find out.

  7. HI
    can contact me on my email i have problem to install the Meta and codewaver on my mac.
    Urgent tank you for your help

  8. post your problem over here or start a thread at my forum over here:

    http://www.moneyguruforum.com/forex/general-discussion/

    Keep in mind that I’m no OS X guru, and if the problem goes beyond the standard troubleshooting then I am afraid I may not be able to help you.

    Also did you research your problem on google? Most of the times if it’s something common you’ll find a forum posting or some info out there on the net.

  11. hi allan! i couldnt locate the MFC DLLs you mentioned in step4 and wingdings in step5. please help.. thanks

  12. Hmm, then you’ve got a broken windows install. Try to get these files from another system or look on your windows xp install cd.

    If that fails, you may wish to look into VMWare Fusion (see the post above yours)

  13. Oh it just occurred to me that you may have windows set to hide system files. Try this, open up a windows explorer shell by double clicking on the My Computer icon on the desktop, then click on Tool..go to Folder Options… click View, and make sure you have a dot in “show hidden files and folder” …click apply then ok, and browse on over to the C:\Windows\System32\ folder and look for those files again.

  14. “i have trouble..
    after install and i have new msg box :
    cannot open oreans.vxd driver”

    make sure the broker you are downloading from still has version build 218 and not 220 also once you’ve downloaded version 4.00 build 218 don’t update it.

    version 220 has added security and will not work with crossover. you can still get version 218 from ODL and probably others though i don’t know for how much longer.

    http://www.odlsecurities.com/usa/odlmetatrader_demo_download.html

  15. Hmm..I see thanks James 🙂

    I will dl and save a copy of MT4 218 and will setup a download link for you guys for future use.

  17. Hi,
    I tried ODL, but it just won’t install. It walks me through every step till I hit “Finish” button and it won’t launch.
    I looked it up in the folders and it just doesn’t want to open.
    IBFX downloads just fine but is not able to launch because it may be the 220 version. Same message “cannot open oreans.vxd driver” pops up.
    Any other suggestions?
    Thanks.

  18. Hmm, interesting…according to my research that oreans.vxd is related to something called Themida:

    http://oreans.com/

    This could be some issue with CrossOver. You may wish to send them an e-mail if you’re up to it:

    http://www.codeweavers.com/

    If this fails I can suggest an alternative to CrossOver – VMWare Fusion

    http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

    I was going to write a blog post on how to get this up and running, but I’m a little bit busy with heavy EA testing.

  19. My best bet, at this time, would be to contact codeweavers.
    I’ve tried a bunch of other platforms offering MT4 to no avail.
    Thanks.

  20. I contacted somebody at ODL and Monday he will call me back to help me install their platform.
    He said he gets about 10 similar request every week (for macs).
    Maybe I didn’t understand correctly exactly what he said regarding installation, but I remember that I was supposed to close the window at the end instead of pressing the “Finish” button.
    I tried that a few time without any luck.
    I’ll keep you posted as I find something out on Monday… hopefully.

  21. Cool, I’d appreciate it very much. This way I can update my post to include this info in case anybody else runs across the same problem.

  22. nope. no answer.
    I couldn’t do a thing with MT4 on my mac.
    I guess installing Windows would take care of it, but that would beat the purpose of having a mac.

  23. here’s what I got back from codeweavers:

    “While we don’t officially support Metatrader 4, I did learn that the company that makes Metatrader recently started using a system called nProtect (gameguard) to secure their application, and nProtect is completely incompatibly with Crossover, which is why you’re getting that oreans error message. We do not have any plans, or even the ability to support nProtect, so until Metatrader stops using it Crossover won’t be able to run Metatrader.”

  25. I tried installing the platform offered by FXDD but didn’t work either.
    Thanks.
    I’ll give it another try.

  26. It just doesn’t want to work.
    I downloaded it, created a new bottle, and it won’t work.
    I can’t open it. The application won’t launch.
    Thanks for your support.

  27. hmm odd…can you at least run/install other windows programs? I do hope you have crossover setup properly..

    Have you looked into Vmware Fusion?

  28. Yes, I can download and run other programs in crossover (gannanalyst for example, Internet Explorer).

    I have not tried Vmware, as I understand I need to have MS windows installed.
    I really don’t want windows on my computer, that’s why I was really excited about crossover.

  30. hey
    does anybody have a mfc40.dll and mfc42.dll and for file for download…
    i dont have a windows installation anywhere…
    can you please sent it to me on the email or post here
    anton at karbanovich dot com

    thank you very much

    anton.

  31. I was able to install the FXDD MT4 build given above on my Mac Pro 8 CPU machine. And, I wanted to add, in order to stop the ‘Live Update’ just go into the MetaTrader Directory and rename/delete the Liveupdate.exe file so that it will stop asking you to update when you start up MT4!

    Thanks for all the support!

    It seems to work!

  32. You’re welcome Scott. Glad it all worked out.

    To everyone else: Stay tuned to this blog as I will be wrapping up a HOWTO guide on getting MetaTrader 4 to work under Linux 🙂 Any Linux users in the house besides me?

  33. I’ve just folowed the instructions to install MT4 on my Intel Mac. When I go to install the program, everything goes well, until at the end I get a dialog box sayong that the installation has been cancelled by a MT4 rollback feature. Can anyone shed any light on this please? Thanks.

  35. I am having trouble. Im using macbook pro and trying to get mt4 on it. crossover is on and good. At first I downloaded the mt4 build 220 and it didn’t work. So I deleted that off of my hard drive and now downloaded from http://www.mediafire.com/?bjz0gkcoe1j but everytime I start the program it says critical error and quits immediately. Any help? please.

  36. Hi shen, sorry for the late response. There may be an incompatibility between crossover and that particular version of MT4. Are you running the latest version of crossover? Have you tried a newer version of MT4 by any chance? Also did you read this:

    ““While we don’t officially support Metatrader 4, I did learn that the company that makes Metatrader recently started using a system called nProtect (gameguard) to secure their application, and nProtect is completely incompatibly with Crossover, which is why you’re getting that oreans error message. We do not have any plans, or even the ability to support nProtect, so until Metatrader stops using it Crossover won’t be able to run Metatrader.””

  37. I have been trying to do the install for this and I’m running into a few issues. I have downloaded the crossover & MT4 on my Mac OS X. My first concern is in the very first step of this guide I was never prompted to install my OS X install disk. I tried removing the program and re-installing it to get to the disk prompt but it never happened. So I continued with the rest of the install guide and did everything that was listed. It looked like everything was going well and I thought the MT4 was going to load but it just got hung up and never completed the install. So I’m not sure what more can be done. I did take a few screen shots of the hang up and could e-mail them to someone for assistance. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

  38. I forgot to mention I had tried 4 different times to reinstall Crossover. I have a question you mention #2 above that this problem happened to you twice. You had to delete all the files and start over again. I am not clear on what files could be deleted. As I just downloaded the Cross Over Program and have no other files. What did you mean or actually DO? Are you really saying Delete the entire Cross Over Program off the computer and Re-Down Load it? to be able to get the Prompt to insert the OSX Start up Disk? Again any help to get me to actually run this program would be great. I am trying to follow the IVYBOT Downloading sequence and am still at step 1 until I get through this hurdle Thank you. TOM

  39. I’ve heard of some people having trouble compiling programs after build 225. A way to get around this is copy the MetaLang and MetaEditor files from an old installation, replacing the newer ones. This solves the problem.

  40. If I understand all of this correctly – – you *have* to have a working Windows copy to work from – – to complete your download ? What happens if I am a Mac user only – – with no Windows version anywhere – – and wish to attempt all of this as a virgin install – – with no mfc dll’s to access / etc. ? Will this work ?

  42. Thanks. I guess that’s the route I’ll take. Do you know if Metatrader runs adequately on emulation ?

  43. It runs adequately as it doesn’t need a lot of system resources. The only time where it does consume more resource is when you have a LOT of EAs or indicators running at the same time.

  44. Has anybody tried to install MT4 from MBtrading ? I’m trying to install it, but it is geting stuck while copying a file at MT4\Mailbox\1190736044.english. any help is appreciated.

  45. I haven’t Srini, but I’d imagine it should work just the same as any other MT4 platform. You can just skip that file. It doesn’t look like a critical file to me.

  46. http://www.oreans.com/ThemidaWhatsNew.php
    Themida [2.1.0.0] (14-Aug-2009)
    [+] Full compatibility under MAC/Wine and MAC/Crossover

    That’s the protection software that Metatrader uses, and hopefully they will integrate it in future build.

    Srini: you need mfc42, and install will go through. (but you will see next error (in bold sentence on top)

  49. What MT4 build are you using? Build 225? If you downloaded the latest MT4 software from a broker’s website you most likely are using the latest version which is MT4 Build 225.

    I’d recommend you try the Build 218 at the bottom of my blog post.

    If that fails you may have to go the route of VMWare Fusion or Parralels Desktop for Mac

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