Mac owners, finally
Embroidery software for Mac
Finally, embroidery software that’s actually user-friendly.
If you love Cricut for cutting, you’ll love Unzip2Stitch for embroidery.
For years, embroidery software only worked on Windows. If you own a Mac, you have almost certainly been told the same thing: buy a copy of Windows and run your embroidery software inside a pretend PC, on the real computer you already paid for.
Unzip2Stitch is a real Mac app. It runs natively. No Parallels, no Boot Camp, no second computer under the desk.
See Unzip2Stitch — $179 Regular price $249.

What that means in plain English
- Works on Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3 and newer) — made from about 2020 onwards
- Your Mac software needs to be macOS 11 or newer — if you have kept up with updates, you are fine
- Approved by Apple, so it opens without warnings
- Mac and Windows get the same tools and the same updates, on the same day
Got an older Mac? Email me before you buy and we will check it together. I would rather tell you it will not work than take your money.
What you can actually do with it
It is not just a place to look at your designs. It is where you make things with them.
- Find every design on your Mac, including the ones still zipped and the ones buried in Downloads
- Merge two designs into one and add your own lettering
- Type with the alphabets you already own — the Font Manager turns 52 separate stitch files into one real, typeable font
- Monogram, recolor, arrange, and tune the density for your fabric
- Add a Pile Tamer background for towels and plush fabrics, so stitches sit on top instead of sinking in
- Save an SVG for your cutting machine, so appliqué fabric is cut for you instead of trimmed by hand
- Match your threads to real brands so the screen matches the machine
- Check it fits your hoop, preview the stitch-out, then export
The formats your machine reads
You do not need to know what a stitch file is called. Find your machine and Unzip2Stitch saves the right one.
| Your machine | The file it saves |
|---|---|
| Brother | PES |
| Baby Lock | PES |
| Janome | JEF |
| Husqvarna Viking | VP3 or HUS |
| Pfaff | VP3 |
| Bernina | EXP |
| Melco | EXP |
| Singer | XXX |
| Most commercial machines | DST |
And you only tell it once. When you set up Unzip2Stitch you tell it which machines you own, and it remembers. After that every design shows a For your machine button — click it and you get the right file. You never have to think about formats again.
Not sure which you have? Save it as DST — nearly every machine reads it.
What about Embrilliance?
It runs on a Mac too, and it is good software — I have used it for years and I still recommend it to people. So this is not a case of one working on a Mac and the other not.
The difference is what you get in one place, and what it costs to get there. Embrilliance is sold in parts: one program to edit and letter, another to add more tools, another again if you want to digitize from scratch. You buy the piece you need, and then the next piece.
Unzip2Stitch is one program at $179. It starts a step earlier than the others — with the designs and fonts you already own, scattered across your computer, many of them still sitting in the zip folders you downloaded them in. It catalogs all of it so you can actually see what you have, opens the ones still zipped without you unzipping a thing, and then lets you work: type with your fonts, merge two designs into one, match your threads to real spools, check it fits your hoop, and save it in the format your machine reads.
If you already own Embrilliance and you are happy with it, keep it. The two sit together perfectly well. But if what you actually need is to find what you own and get it onto your machine without a second program and a second purchase, that is the gap this was built for.
Simple, one-time purchase
You pay once. There is no monthly fee, nothing to renew, and nothing stops working later. Early access is $179; the regular price is $249.
Questions Mac owners ask
Does Unzip2Stitch really run on a Mac without Windows?
Which Macs does it run on?
Is the Mac version behind the Windows version?
Will it open the zip files I download from design shops?
Can I use the embroidery fonts I already bought?
Is it a subscription?
Is there machine embroidery software for Mac?
Does it run on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3)?

You are not buying from a stranger
I am Lorna. For eight years I have answered embroidery questions every day in Embroidery for Beginners, my Facebook group of more than 50,000 members. Unzip2Stitch was built out of what I watched people there struggle with.
My name is on the digitizing, on the software and on that group. If something goes wrong, you know exactly where to find me — and so do fifty thousand other embroiderers.