macOS - Apple Silicon ARM Compatibility

Most new Macs are coming with the new Apple Silicon ARM chips. This move away from Intel chips to Apple's own ARM chip creates an incompatibility for several applications.

Details

Apple does provide an emulator called Rosetta 2 which can run many of the applications that have not been written for ARM chips yet, but it will run a little slower (although the large increase in speeds provided by these chips makes this less noticeable) and there are some applications that do not run properly even with emulation.

WARNING: Rosetta 2 will be end of life starting macOS 28. Apps currently requiring it will need to update to support being run on Apple Silicon ARM chips.

Apps that run natively on Apple ARM chips

  • Microsoft Office 365 
  • Requires v16.44+, but our current deployment is still at 16.41.
  • Microsoft Edge
  • FireFox v84+
  • Python v2.7.16, v 3.8.2, v3.9
    • Python 2.7 has been deprecated and replaced with 3, and Big Sur does not have python installed by default.
  • Blender
    • *cycles rendering using GPU not supported
  • Atom
  • BBEdit
  • Electron
  • FileZilla
  • Git
  • GitHub Desktop
  • XCode
  • Handbrake v1.4.0
  • Chrome v87
  • Unity v6.6
  • MySQL Workbench v8
  • Wireshark
  • IBM SPSS v27.0.1.0
  • MatLab vMATLAB R2026b
  • RStudio v2026.05.0
  • Audacity v3.2
  • Inkscape v1.4.2
  • Autodesk Fusion 360 (supported after 2023 versions)
  • Autodesk Maya v2024
  • Skethup v2022.0
  • Box Drive v2.48
  • Bash
  • TensorFlow v2.13
  • PaperCut MF Client v25

Apps that can run on Apple computers with ARM chips using Rosetta 2

PaperCut MF Client (pre-v25)

Enable Rosetta 2:

  • sudo softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license
  • Rosetta 2 is not installed by default, in order to install Rosetta 2, run the following in Terminal with an admin account:
  • With Universal coded applications, macOS will run the ARM version by default.
    • If the Arm version is a little buggy and you want to tell macOS to run using Rosetta 2 instead,
    • right-click on the application and select Get Info.
    • Under General, check the box for Open Using Rosetta.
WARNING: Rosetta 2 will be end of life starting macOS 28. Apps currently requiring it will need to update to support being run on Apple Silicon ARM chips.

Check for apps using Rosetta 2

Starting in macOS 26.4, a pop-up will start appearing when users launch Intel based application using Rosetta 2.

Users can also check for Intel based applications that use Rosetta 2 by opening Applications, Utilities, Activity Monitor. Then sort by the Kind column and look for apps that list Kind as Intel.

Activity Monitor showing PaperCut UserClient with Intel listed in the Kind column

Apps that currently are incompatible on Apple computers with ARM chips

  • Parallels, VMware Fusion, VirtualBox and other virtualization software can only run Windows ARM versions.
    • They can still run MacOS and Linux VMs though.
  • Boot Camp is deprecated on ARM Macs.

Environment

  • Apple

  • Mac Silicon ARM Chip

  • Applications

  • Software

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