Installation¶
DOSBox Staging is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. On every platform it’s a quick, self-contained install — you’re just adding a standalone emulator, not modifying anything already on your system. Follow the instructions for your operating system below.
GOG and Steam DOS games
If you already play DOS games through GOG.com or Steam, installing DOSBox Staging is completely safe and won’t interfere with them. Each of those games ships with its own private copy of DOSBox inside the game’s folder and launches that copy directly.
DOSBox Staging installs separately in its own location and never touches or overrides those bundled copies, so your existing GOG and Steam games will keep working exactly as before. Of course, you can point a game at DOSBox Staging later for better compatibility, but that’s a deliberate opt-in — nothing about the installation does it for you.
Windows¶
The latest release of DOSBox Staging is compatible with any Windows laptop or desktop running 64-bit Windows 8, 10 or 11. A dedicated graphics adapter is recommended for laptops.
We recommend downloading the latest stable version from our website. Both installer and portable ZIP package variants are available.
If you’re new to DOSBox Staging, we recommend the installer and accepting the default install options — that will give you an Open with DOSBox Staging context menu item in Windows Explorer on Windows 8 and 10 to start the emulator from a given folder more easily.
Make sure to read the section about dealing with Microsoft Defender before launching DOSBox Staging for the first time.
Windows 11 note
The Windows Explorer context menu integration only works in Windows 8 and 10 currently.
Legacy Windows support
If you’re still on a legacy Windows version, you can try one of our older unsupported releases. Note that these older versions are provided as-is — we don’t provide any support for them. Also note they don’t come with a manual; many things from the current manual and Getting Started guide are not applicable to older releases.
Tip for power users
The installer is built with Inno Setup. For the available command-line install parameters, please see Inno’s documentation page.
macOS¶
The latest version of DOSBox Staging requires macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later, and supports both Intel and Apple silicon Macs.
Download the latest stable version from our macOS releases page, then simply drag the DOSBox Staging icon into your Applications folder.
Legacy macOS support
If you’re still on a legacy macOS version, you can try one of our older unsupported releases. Note that these older versions are provided as-is — we don’t provide any support for them. Also note they don’t come with a manual; many things from the current manual and Getting Started guide are not applicable to older releases.
Linux¶
The latest DOSBox Staging release is compatible with any laptop or desktop released after 2010 running a modern x86_64 Linux distribution. A dedicated graphics adapter is recommended for laptops.
Our official build runs on most desktop Linux distributions (x86_64 only for now). It only depends on the C/C++, ALSA, and OpenGL system libraries; all other libraries are statically linked.
Please run the install-icons.sh script included with the release to install
the application icons.
Unofficial repackaged releases
We do not recommend using 3rd party repackagings of DOSBox Staging by external teams (i.e., distribution-specific repository packages, containerised images, etc.) The core DOSBox Staging team has no time and energy to support all these unofficial packages.
If you still decide to use them and run into problems, please ask the person or team who did the repackaging, not the core DOSBox Staging team. Read Unofficial repackaged releases to learn more.