macOS Installation

Note: macOS support for the full range of functionality offered by the SDK is not yet complete. If you need support for R200 or the ZR300, legacy librealsense offers a subset of SDK functionality.

macOS 12+ (Monterey) and newer

sudo required for USB access. On macOS 12+ most librealsense tools that use libusb must be run with elevated privileges. This is due to macOS USB security changes and overriding the default UVC driver.

# examples
sudo examples/rs-multicam
sudo examples/rs-enumerate-devices
sudo examples/rs-hello-realsense
sudo examples/rs-depth

Current Limitations:

  • RealSense Viewer is not supported on macOS in the current release

  • Motion sensors (IMU) are disabled on macOS in the current release

Building from Source

  1. Install CommandLineTools sudo xcode-select --install or download XCode 6.0+ via the AppStore

  2. Install the Homebrew package manager via terminal - link

  3. Install the following packages via brew:

  • brew install cmake libusb pkg-config openssl

Note librealsense requires CMake version 3.10 that can also be obtained via the official CMake site.

  1. Clone the repo

  • git clone https://github.com/realsenseai/librealsense.git

  1. Generate XCode project:

  • mkdir build && cd build

  • sudo xcode-select --reset

  • cmake .. -DBUILD_EXAMPLES=true -DBUILD_GRAPHICAL_EXAMPLES=true -DFORCE_RSUSB_BACKEND=ON

  1. Build the Project

  • make -j2

Note: On some Mac systems you might encounter ld: library not found for -lusb-1.0 error (either in the terminal during make or in XCode) This can be worked-around by setting environment variable: /bin/launchctl setenv LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib

Note: On some Mac systems you might encounter Could NOT find OpenSSL error (Usually when setting -DCHECK_FOR_UPDATES=ON), this can be worked-around by setting a global variable export OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=`brew --prefix openssl`

Note: You can find more information about the available configuration options on this wiki page.

Packaging your application

  1. librealsense requires libusb to be bundled in the application. To fix the real-time linking, use install_name_tool

install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/libusb/lib/libusb-1.0.0.dylib @rpath/libusb-1.0.0.dylib librealsense2.dylib

  1. Copy libusb-1.0.0.dylib and librealsense2.dylib to your application’s Frameworks folder