macOS Intel/Apple Silicon choice

Newer macs use an architecture often referred to as Apple Silicon or as their model M1 (or M2 etc) which are based on ARM64 (or AArch64) processors. Older macs use Intel (or X64) based processors.

From Jalview 2.11.3.0 onwards we will offer downloads for both platforms.

Whilst the newer Apple Silicon machines can run a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) compiled for Intel (you may need to install some Apple software called Rosetta), you will get better performance with a JVM compiled for Apple Silicon. Older Intel machines will not run an Apple Silcon JVM so must use the Intel installer.

If in doubt, the Intel installer should work, but there’s no harm in trying the Apple Silicon installer first if you’re not sure! You can check which models of mac use, and how to check if your mac uses, Apple Silicon at this Apple help page.

DMG Installer

The Jalview installer for macOS is a typical macOS Disk Image. This can be opened by finding it in the folder it was downloaded to and double-clicking on the DMG file.

You should then drag the Jalview icon onto the Applications folder icon and let go to make a copy of Jalview in your own macOS Applications folder. This will only take a few seconds to copy. After that you should eject the disk image by right clicking on the Jalview Installer window and selecting Eject “Jalview Installer”.

When you first run Jalview from the Applications folder macOS will ask you to verify that you want to launch Jalview. This is normal and will only happen the first time.

Verifying the SHA256 checksum

The download page provides a SHA256 checksum that you might want to use to verify your download. To do this in macOS, open a Terminal window and use the command

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Jalview-2_11_4_0-macos-x64-java_8.dmg

The output checksum should match the checksum displayed on the download page.

Installing using Homebrew

There is a homebrew recipe to install the Jalview.app application into your /Applications folder the same as if you’d used the disk image installer.

brew install jalview

Also see the Installing with Homebrew page

If you have problems installing Jalview you can contact us on the Jalview Discussion Forum .

Administrator install

Installing Jalview as an Administrator user so that it can be used by all users of a macOS system is possible from Jalview 2.11.4.0 onwards. Please see Administrator install and Administrator install on macOS for more details.