How to run KeePass on macOS 11 Big Sur

 in macOS by (updated 1435 days ago)

For a number of reasons (like differential sync, automation with triggers etc.), I still use the original KeePass 2.x (written in .NET) on all platforms, even on macOS.

The best working solution for me is to run KeePass in “Wine”. On macOS Catalina/Big Sur or newer macOS’s lacking 32 bit app support, you will need wine that includes wine32on64 binary. One such package is wine-crossover from following 3rd party Homebrew repository of gcenx (see for more details).

brew tap gcenx/wine
brew cask install --no-quarantine wine-crossover

With this package, the only requirement to run KeePass is to install .NET Framework (I have used version 4.7.2).

winetricks -q dotnet472

Note that .NET Framework installation may take a long time (even over an hour on slower CPU). Then, just start KeePass. Both portable and installer versions work.

wine Downloads/KeePass-2.46/KeePass.exe
KeePass 2.46 in wine on macOS 11 Big Sur

Optionally you can enable “RetinaMode” with higher DPI.

KeePass 2.46 in wine on macOS 11 Big Sur (HiDPI)