Install the ɳSelf CLI on macOS with an Apple Silicon processor (darwin/arm64). Tested on M1, M2, M3, and M4 chips.

The ɳSelf CI suite runs a smoke test on macos-14 runners for every release, verifying nself version, nself doctor, nself init, and nself build pass natively on Apple Silicon before any binary ships.

Both work. OrbStack is recommended on Apple Silicon:

Enable VirtioFS in Docker Desktop (if you use Docker Desktop): Docker Desktop → Settings → General → VirtioFS, this halves bind-mount latency on Apple Silicon.

Do NOT use osxfs, it causes significant I/O slowdowns for Postgres data volumes.

brew install nself-org/nself/nself

Homebrew automatically selects the darwin/arm64 bottle. No Rosetta translation needed.

Verify the binary is native:

file $(which nself)
# nself: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

curl -sSL https://install.nself.org | bash

The installer detects arm64 automatically and downloads nself-darwin-arm64.tar.gz.

Manual download:

VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/nself-org/cli/releases/latest | grep '"tag_name"' | cut -d'"' -f4)
curl -L "https://github.com/nself-org/cli/releases/download/${VERSION}/nself-darwin-arm64.tar.gz" -o nself.tar.gz
tar -xzf nself.tar.gz
sudo mv nself /usr/local/bin/nself
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/nself

nself version
# nself v1.0.9 (darwin/arm64)

nself doctor
# All checks should show green

Plugins run as Docker containers. On Apple Silicon:

• All ɳSelf plugin images are multi-arch (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64). No Rosetta translation is used for plugin containers.
• OrbStack and Docker Desktop both use QEMU or native arm64 layer, either works.
• Plugin images use linux/arm64 natively when available.

If you see WARNING: The requested image's platform (linux/amd64) does not match your machine's platform (linux/arm64), that plugin does not yet have an arm64 image. File a bug at github.com/nself-org/plugins.

nself doctor reports Docker not running

Start OrbStack from Applications, or click the Docker Desktop whale in your menu bar.

Homebrew installs the amd64 binary under Rosetta

This happens if Homebrew itself is running under Rosetta (x86 terminal). Open Terminal natively (not via Rosetta) or install the ARM Homebrew:

arch -arm64 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

nself start is slow on first run

Docker pulls are slower on the first run. Subsequent starts use cached layers and are significantly faster.

Port conflicts on localhost

nself doctor will detect port conflicts. Common culprits: Postgres on 5432, Redis on 6379. Stop local services before nself start.

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