Mac OS

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Here we will go through the installation steps on how to install Citra on Mac OS, by simply downloading the pre-compiled Citra release or by building from source.

Download Latest Citra for Mac

File Name	Citra MacOS Universal
File Size	59.6MB
Version	r608383e
Developer	PabloMK7
Release Date	29 September 2024
Download	Download label

Download Old/Final Version

File Name	Citra MacOS Universal
File Size	59.7MB
Version	2104 Nightly
Developer	Citra Team
Release Date	4 March 2024
Download	Download label

Installing Citra on Mac OS

After the download, extract the file.

Upon first launch you will receive an error as shown below. To bypass and open Citra, simply click on “Show in Finder” and control-click open. You have successfully installed Citra on MAC!

Building from Source

It’s recommended that you use homebrew to install dependencies. You’ll need to download and install the following to build Citra:

CMake (brew install cmake)
A recent version of Xcode and the Xcode command line tools
Citra Source Code (Old Version) / New Version Source Code

Using CMake

Create a build folder and generate makefiles for the build:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..

Building Citra

make -j4

A citra-qt.app application bundle will now be present under build/bin/. Note that this is non-portable and only works on your machine. You can create distributable bundles as well by running make bundle and checking the output in build/bundle/.

About building on Apple Silicon machines

To build Citra targeting macOS on ARM, the process is largely the same. A few things to note are:

Make sure the Homebrew version you have installed is the ARM version
If you are cross-compiling from an x86_64 machine for ARM, when running the cmake command you’ll want to use this command instead:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="arm64"

Similarly, if you are cross-compiling from an ARM machine for x86_64, you’ll want to use this command:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="x86_64"