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macOS Build Guide

Updated for MacOS 11.2

This guide describes how to build bitcoind, command-line utilities, and GUI on macOS

Note: The following is for Intel Macs only!

Dependencies

The following dependencies are required:

Library Purpose Description
automake Build Generate makefile
libtool Build Shared library support
pkg-config Build Configure compiler and linker flags
boost Utility Library for threading, data structures, etc
libevent Networking OS independent asynchronous networking

The following dependencies are optional:

Library Purpose Description
berkeley-db@4 Berkeley DB Wallet storage (only needed when wallet enabled)
qt@5 GUI GUI toolkit (only needed when GUI enabled)
qrencode QR codes in GUI Generating QR codes (only needed when GUI enabled)
zeromq ZMQ notification Allows generating ZMQ notifications (requires ZMQ version >= 4.0.0)
sqlite SQLite DB Wallet storage (only needed when wallet enabled)
miniupnpc UPnP Support Firewall-jumping support (needed for port mapping support)
libnatpmp NAT-PMP Support Firewall-jumping support (needed for port mapping support)
python3 Testing Python Interpreter (only needed when running the test suite)

The following dependencies are optional packages required for deploying:

Library Purpose Description
librsvg Deploy Dependency Library to render SVG files
ds_store Deploy Dependency Examine and modify .DS_Store files
mac_alias Deploy Dependency Generate/Read binary alias and bookmark records

See dependencies.md for a complete overview.

Preparation

The commands in this guide should be executed in a Terminal application. macOS comes with a built-in Terminal located in:

/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

1. Xcode Command Line Tools

The Xcode Command Line Tools are a collection of build tools for macOS. These tools must be installed in order to build Bitcoin Core from source.

To install, run the following command from your terminal:

xcode-select --install

Upon running the command, you should see a popup appear. Click on Install to continue the installation process.

2. Homebrew Package Manager

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that allows one to install packages from the command line easily. While several package managers are available for macOS, this guide will focus on Homebrew as it is the most popular. Since the examples in this guide which walk through the installation of a package will use Homebrew, it is recommended that you install it to follow along. Otherwise, you can adapt the commands to your package manager of choice.

To install the Homebrew package manager, see: https://brew.sh

Note: If you run into issues while installing Homebrew or pulling packages, refer to Homebrew's troubleshooting page.

3. Install Required Dependencies

The first step is to download the required dependencies. These dependencies represent the packages required to get a barebones installation up and running. To install, run the following from your terminal:

brew install automake libtool boost pkg-config libevent

4. Clone Bitcoin repository

git should already be installed by default on your system. Now that all the required dependencies are installed, let's clone the Bitcoin Core repository to a directory. All build scripts and commands will run from this directory.

git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git

5. Install Optional Dependencies

Wallet Dependencies

It is not necessary to build wallet functionality to run bitcoind or bitcoin-qt. To enable legacy wallets, you must install berkeley-db@4. To enable descriptor wallets, sqlite is required. Skip berkeley-db@4 if you intend to exclusively use descriptor wallets.

Legacy Wallet Support

berkeley-db@4 is required to enable support for legacy wallets. Skip if you don't intend to use legacy wallets.

brew install berkeley-db@4
Descriptor Wallet Support

Note: Apple has included a useable sqlite package since macOS 10.14. You may not need to install this package.

sqlite is required to enable support for descriptor wallets. Skip if you don't intend to use descriptor wallets.

brew install sqlite

GUI Dependencies

Qt

Bitcoin Core includes a GUI built with the cross-platform Qt Framework. To compile the GUI, we need to install qt@5. Skip if you don't intend to use the GUI.

brew install qt@5

Note: Building with Qt binaries downloaded from the Qt website is not officially supported. See the notes in #7714.

qrencode

The GUI can encode addresses in a QR Code. To build in QR support for the GUI, install qrencode. Skip if not using the GUI or don't want QR code functionality.

brew install qrencode

Port Mapping Dependencies

miniupnpc

miniupnpc may be used for UPnP port mapping. Skip if you do not need this functionality.

brew install miniupnpc
libnatpmp

libnatpmp may be used for NAT-PMP port mapping. Skip if you do not need this functionality.

brew install libnatpmp

Note: UPnP and NAT-PMP support will be compiled in and disabled by default. Check out the further configuration section for more information.

ZMQ Dependencies

Support for ZMQ notifications requires the following dependency. Skip if you do not need ZMQ functionality.

brew install zeromq

ZMQ is automatically compiled in and enabled if the dependency is detected. Check out the further configuration section for more information.

For more information on ZMQ, see: zmq.md

Test Suite Dependencies

There is an included test suite that is useful for testing code changes when developing. To run the test suite (recommended), you will need to have Python 3 installed:

brew install python

Deploy Dependencies

You can deploy a .dmg containing the Bitcoin Core application using make deploy. This command depends on a couple of python packages, so it is required that you have python installed.

Ensuring that python is installed, you can install the deploy dependencies by running the following commands in your terminal:

brew install librsvg
pip3 install ds_store mac_alias

Building Bitcoin Core

1. Configuration

There are many ways to configure Bitcoin Core, here are a few common examples:

Wallet (BDB + SQlite) Support, No GUI:

If berkeley-db@4 is installed, then legacy wallet support will be built. If berkeley-db@4 is not installed, then this will throw an error. If sqlite is installed, then descriptor wallet support will also be built. Additionally, this explicitly disables the GUI.

./autogen.sh
./configure --with-gui=no
Wallet (only SQlite) and GUI Support:

This explicitly enables the GUI and disables legacy wallet support. If qt is not installed, this will throw an error. If sqlite is installed then descriptor wallet functionality will be built. If sqlite is not installed, then wallet functionality will be disabled.

./autogen.sh
./configure --without-bdb --with-gui=yes
No Wallet or GUI
./autogen.sh
./configure --without-wallet --with-gui=no
Further Configuration

You may want to dig deeper into the configuration options to achieve your desired behavior. Examine the output of the following command for a full list of configuration options:

./configure -help

2. Compile

After configuration, you are ready to compile. Run the following in your terminal to compile Bitcoin Core:

make -jx    # use -jX here for parallelism
make check  # Run tests if Python 3 is available

3. Deploy (optional)

You can also create a .dmg containing the .app bundle by running the following command:

make deploy

Running Bitcoin Core

Bitcoin Core should now be available at ./src/bitcoind. If you compiled support for the GUI, it should be available at ./src/qt/bitcoin-qt.

The first time you run bitcoind or bitcoin-qt, it will start downloading the blockchain. This process could take many hours, or even days on slower than average systems.

By default, blockchain and wallet data files will be stored in:

/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/

Before running, you may create an empty configuration file:

mkdir -p "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin"

touch "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf"

chmod 600 "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf"

You can monitor the download process by looking at the debug.log file:

tail -f $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/debug.log

Other commands:

./src/bitcoind -daemon      # Starts the bitcoin daemon.
./src/bitcoin-cli --help    # Outputs a list of command-line options.
./src/bitcoin-cli help      # Outputs a list of RPC commands when the daemon is running.
./src/qt/bitcoin-qt -server # Starts the bitcoin-qt server mode, allows bitcoin-cli control