I just bought and installed the game using GOG Galaxy and after the initial long verification time, the game now crashes every time I run it. I am running it directly, not through GOG Galaxy.

What I found odd is the crash indicated it was running the "X86-64 (Translated)" version which means it's using Rosetta 2, but it shouldn't be since that's not checked in the Info window.

Now here's the more interesting thing. If I go into the app content folder (Baldur's Gate 3.app/Contents/MacOS) and run the "Baldur's Gate 3" it immediately crashes, but if I run "Baldur's Gate 3 GOG" the game opens and works fine.

As such it seems like the app is running the wrong executable. I have no idea why though. Any ideas on how to get the app to launch normally?

Edit:

I ended up renaming the "Baldur's Gate 3" file that causes the came to crash as "Baldur's Gate 3.bad" and then copied the "Baldur's Gate 3 GOG" to "Baldur's Gate 3", effectively replacing the executable that crashes with the one that runs. I can now run the app normally, but I find it odd that I need to do that as basically anyone with an Apple Silicon Mac shouldn't be able to run the application without crashing if the exec is bad.

Thanks so much, exactly the solution for me.

Great find, thx for sharing! :-)

yes the extra code on the shortcut is for running it through GOG Galaxy i.e, it tells the Larian launcher to load first

Not related to OP's issue but I wanted to ask others playing the game on an M1 Macbook whether performance in Act 3 has improved since the early days. I bought the game on release and played a lot until Act 3, where the more crowded sections of the city were unplayable. Is there any change now?

act3 is a known performance fuckup which isn't just a Mac issue... all kinds of 'patches' [including the next one which is patch 8] have tried to fix parts... offen just to break other places

my advice is wait until Larian stops fucking around and at least thats it before playing again... in another year or two people will find most the major bugs

This was finally fixed in patch 8. That or the update to GOG Galaxy fixed it. Either way I can actually launch BG3 from GOG Galaxy and I don’t have to rename files to do it.

A lot of what is making 8 a buggy crashing mess for so many people, is the fact that Larian changed a lot of resources that mods have been built on, and most authors haven't fixed/updated/rewritten their mods yet (and may never do it). It will be at least a year just for that end of things to get sorted out.

If you just want to play this game, you should have kept your patch 7 install.