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Installing Finch on macOS

Prerequisites

To get started with Finch on macOS, the development machine must meet the following prerequisites.

  • macOS versions:
    • 26 Tahoe
    • 15 Sequoia
  • Both Intel and Apple Silicon based systems running the last 2 major versions of macOS are supported.
  • Recommended minimum hardware requirements is at least 2 vCPU and 4 GB memory.
  • Administrative privileges are required to install Finch on to the machine.

Rosetta only works on macOS 26 Tahoe or later

If you are using Rosetta to run amd64 containers on arm64, you must be on macOS 26 Tahoe or later. On macOS 15 or earlier leave rosetta unset or set rosetta: false in ~/.finch/finch.yaml to use QEMU emulation instead..

Finch may work on previous macOS releases, however at this time it is only tested on the versions listed above.

Installing Finch with homebrew

To install Finch with a package manager you can leverage the homebrew package manager.

  1. Verify that homebrew is already installed on the system by running the brew help command brew help in your favorite terminal application. If it is not, navigate to the homebrew documentation for installation instructions.

    brew help

  2. Install Finch using the brew CLI. If prompted, enter your macOS password.

    brew install finch

  3. You can now verify the installation.

    # Check the installed Finch version
finch --version

# Check the status of the Finch virtual machine
finch vm status

Installing using the Application Package

For each Finch release, we provider a .pkg Application Package. The latest package can be found on the Github Releases, with a separate package available for each architecture (Apple Silicon and Intel).

  1. Download the relevant Application Package from the Finch Github Releases page. Ensuring you have selected the appropriate version and architecture.

  2. Once the Application Package has been downloaded, in Finder, you can double click the .pkg and start the installation. Click continue.

    Finch Installation Wizard

  3. Read and accept the Finch license and click continue.

    Finch Installation License

  4. Click Install. This will prompt you for your macOS password.

    Finch Installation Screen

  5. When the Finch installation is complete, you can close the installation prompt.

    Finch Installation Complete

  6. You can now verify the installation.

    # Check the installed Finch version
finch --version

# Check the status of the Finch virtual machine
finch vm status