Eden on macOS is relatively stable, with only occasional crashes and bugs. Support relies on the MoltenVK layer to translate Vulkan calls to Metal — this works well in most cases, but introduces some compatibility limitations compared to native Vulkan platforms. Plans are in progress to support KosmicKrisp and similar newer GPU backends as alternatives to MoltenVK.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/eden-emulator/mirror/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Neither macOS nor Asahi Linux currently supports NCE (Native Code Execution). Additionally, Asahi has known paging bugs with fastmem. This means performance on Apple Silicon Macs running Eden natively will be more CPU-limited than on other platforms.
Bypassing Gatekeeper
macOS Catalina and later require all software to be signed by Apple or a trusted (paid) developer. Eden is not signed through Apple’s program, so the system will block it on first launch. Follow these steps to allow it:Find the security prompt
Scroll down to the Security section. You will see a message indicating that Eden was blocked because it is from an unidentified developer.
Enter your credentials
Enter the password for an account with administrator permissions and press OK.
A visual step-by-step version of this guide with screenshots is available at the Notion guide.
MoltenVK
MoltenVK is a Vulkan-to-Metal translation layer required on macOS because Apple does not expose native Vulkan support. Eden bundles or depends on MoltenVK to render graphics. Known MoltenVK limitations:- The driver breaks when using more than 16 vertex attributes/bindings.
- Some Apple Silicon GPU and driver combinations have problems with fragment discard when early depth testing is enabled — discarded fragments may appear corrupted.
- Reversed viewport depth range does not work correctly on MoltenVK, mirroring a known limitation on several other Vulkan drivers.
Qt Version Requirement
The CI pipeline builds with Qt 6.7.3 viaaqtinstall. If you are building from source, install the correct Qt version:
Intel Mac Support
Intel Macs are believed to be supported, but no CI is provided for them. Performance on Intel Macs will likely be poor on all but the highest-end iMac and Mac Pro configurations due to:- Weaker integrated or discrete GPU options compared to Apple Silicon
- The additional translation overhead from MoltenVK on top of whatever Vulkan feature gaps exist for the specific GPU
Building from Source on macOS
If you are building Eden from source on macOS, you will need the following dependencies via Homebrew:qt@6 formula is pinned to 6.7.3 or that you use aqtinstall to control the exact version, as noted above.