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How to play PSU Clementine on macOS

By Harold Davis
October 19, 2026 guide install

If you want to play Phantasy Star Universe on a Mac, the Clementine private server is the place to do it, and there is now a native way to run the client. It runs on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer), it needs no Wine, no CrossOver and no virtual machine, and it connects to Clementine and plays online when you press Play. This is the short version of the install. The full version with every screen is the how-to guide.

I'm Harold, I built it, and I'm not affiliated with SEGA or the Clementine team.

What you need

• A Mac with an Apple Silicon chip (Apple menu, About This Mac, and look for "Chip: Apple M1" or later). Update: there is now a separate Intel download too, see the Download page. It is new and only tried through Rosetta so far.
• macOS 15 or later. I am working on macOS 13 support and on Intel Macs, but version 1.0.0 needs macOS 15 on Apple Silicon.
• A free Clementine account and your own copy of the Clementine client. Our download does not include the game, and it never will.
• About 1 GB of free space, or around 7 GB if your Clementine folder sits on a different drive than your Mac's main storage.

You do not need Xcode or Apple's developer tools. The app carries its own compiler.

The install, in five steps

1. Get the Clementine client. Register at psu-clementine.com, download the client and unzip it somewhere you will remember, for example a Games folder in your home folder.
2. Download the Mac app. Get the DMG from the Download page. The page shows its SHA-256 checksum, and you can check yours with shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/PSU-Clementine-1.0.0.dmg in Terminal.
3. Drag it to Applications. Open the DMG and drag PSU Clementine onto the Applications shortcut.
4. Open it once the macOS way. The app is not notarized by Apple, so macOS blocks it the first time. Double-click it, click Done, then open System Settings, Privacy & Security, scroll down and press Open Anyway next to "PSU Clementine". You only do this once.
5. Point it at your Clementine folder and press Play. The app finds your folder (or you choose it), makes its own copy, builds the game for your Mac, and then opens the game. The first build took about 22 seconds on my Mac. After that it starts in about a second. Log in with your Clementine account and play.

Your original Clementine folder is never changed. The app only reads it and works on its own copy.

Controllers and settings

A PlayStation or Xbox controller works through macOS. Connect it before you press Play. Settings (Cmd and comma) has full screen or window, the game's own resolution, volume and the keyboard keys. The frame rate stays capped, as Clementine's rules ask.

If something goes wrong

If macOS says the app can't be opened, use Open Anyway as in step 4. If the game stops unexpectedly, the app offers Open Logs Folder, and crash reports stay on your Mac and are never sent anywhere. The how-to guide has a troubleshooting section for the common cases.

Support the people who run the server

PSU lives on the Clementine server because the Clementine team keeps it running. If you play and can spare something, please support Clementine on Patreon. That page is theirs, and none of it comes to me.

If this Mac client is useful to you and you want to say thanks, you can also tip me directly. It is optional, and it does not make this project affiliated with Clementine or SEGA.

Where to go next

The Download page has the file and the checksum. The how-to guide walks through each screen. The story of how this was built, from the first spike to the lobby, is in the rest of the blog.