Saints Reborn on Mac

Play Saints Row (Xbox 360, 2006) on an Apple silicon Mac, free.

This is a Mac setup for Saints Reborn by Whompay. It builds the game on your own Mac from your own disc and adds a Saints Reborn app that opens the mod loader, where you pick your mods and press Play.

This repository contains no game code or data. You build the game yourself, on your own Mac, from your own disc.

Saints Reborn is a fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Volition, THQ Nordic, Deep Silver, Plaion or Microsoft. Saints Reborn on Mac is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Apple either.

What you need

• A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or newer), macOS 14 or newer
• Your own Saints Row (Xbox 360) disc image (.iso)
• About 15 GB of free disk space

Install

1. Download SaintsReborn-Mac-Setup.zip from the latest release and open it in your Downloads folder to unpack it.
2. Right-click Install Saints Reborn and choose Open. If macOS says it cannot be opened, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway.
3. Choose your Saints Row disc image (.iso) when asked, then let it work. It downloads the free tools it needs and builds the game, which takes about an hour. It may ask for your Mac password once.
4. When it finishes, open Saints Reborn in the SaintsReborn folder in your home folder. Tick the mods you want and press Play.

You can drag the app to your Dock or Applications folder, and delete the downloaded ZIP and installer afterwards.

With Terminal

git clone https://github.com/00xJS/SaintsReborn-Mac.git ~/SaintsReborn
~/SaintsReborn/scripts/setup-mac.sh --iso "/path/to/Saints Row.iso" --accept-license

--accept-license accepts Microsoft's license for the C++ files the build uses. Homebrew must be installed first.

Update

Double-click Update Saints Reborn in the SaintsReborn folder in your home folder. Your saves and mod list are kept. New versions are announced on the releases page.

Playing

An Xbox controller works as on the console, and keyboard and mouse are fully supported. Controls, mods and co-op are the same as in Saints Reborn: see the Saints Reborn README.

Useful keys, no fn needed: Option+Enter fullscreen / window, ` (the key under Esc) frame rate counter, P frame rate cap (30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / off), V first person view. F11, F1 and F10 do the same as on Windows.

Saves are in ~/SaintsReborn/dist/game.

On a Mac the game draws at its native resolution with anti-aliasing (FXAA) and a little sharpening. To change that, put files next to saintsrow.exe in dist: aa.txt containing none, fxaa or fxaa_extreme, and look.txt containing off (or the 14 picture values that mods use with set_look).

Legal

This project distributes only original source code, configuration files and a patch to the BSD-licensed ReXGlue SDK. It does not include, and must not be used to distribute, any part of Saints Row: no disc images, game files, recompiled code or built executables. Dump your own disc. Requests for or links to game files will be removed.

The project's own code is released under the Apache License 2.0. If you share, re-upload or build on it, you must keep the NOTICE file and credit it as Saints Reborn by Whompay. The SDK and the libraries it downloads during the build are covered by their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. "Saints Row" is a trademark of its owner and is used here only to name the game this project works with.

Credits

• Saints Reborn by Whompay: the project itself. Saints Reborn on Mac is built on it and changes only what the Mac setup needs.
• ReXGlue SDK by Tom Clay and contributors.
• Xenia by Ben Vanik and contributors, which the SDK is derived from.
• Game Porting Toolkit by Apple, packaged by Gcenx.
• Volition, for the game.