Build for macOS from source

This page explains how to build Vicinae for macOS from source.

macOS support is in beta. If you just want to use Vicinae on your Mac, download the notarized .dmg from the install page instead of building from source.

Requirements

A C++23-capable compiler. The macOS build is tested on macOS Tahoe with AppleClang 21. Older toolchains are not tested and may not work.
Homebrew to install dependencies.

Get the sources

Clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/vicinaehq/vicinae.git && cd vicinae

Install dependencies

From the source tree, install all build dependencies:

make mac-deps

This installs the build toolchain via Homebrew and Qt from the official binaries (via aqtinstall) into ~/Qt. You can override the Qt version with the QT_VERSION environment variable.

The build system automatically picks up the most recent Qt installation found under ~/Qt. If you want to use a Qt installed somewhere else, pass -DQT_DIR=/path/to/qt when configuring with CMake. You can also install QT using Homebrew if you want to.

Build

make release

The resulting binaries are placed under build/bin: vicinae-server (the launcher itself) and vicinae (the CLI).

Assemble the app bundle

You can assemble an .app bundle and install it:

make mac-bundle
mv build/Vicinae.app /Applications