Apple Silicon: retirement of Rosetta 2

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Apple has announced that, beginning with macOS 28 (to be released Autumn 2027), Rosetta 2 will be deprecated such that it only supports some older Intel games.

My understanding is that Rosetta 2 is essential for running the MKVToolnix GUI on Apple Silicon macs.

I’m not a programmer and have no sense of how easy/possible it will be to use MKVToolnix following this change taking place. Could anyone please provide an informed view?

With a lead-in time this large, will a version for Apple Silicon macs be made available in time? I use the software very often, so it’d be a real problem if it’s no longer usable following the retirement of Rosetta 2.

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Welcome!

I had a conversation with another user in Building MKVToolNix with Gui on a mac where they succeeded in building their own version on an Apple silicon mac. Personally I do not own an Apple silicon mac and I have no intentions of buying one. Therefore I will likely stop providing Apple binaries at some point.

No one else has stepped up to build Apple silicon binaries for me on a regular basis; even the homebrew folks only re-package the DMG I still provide.

So… yeah.

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I just checked if I’m still correct of full of shit wrt. Homebrew — turns out it’s the latter, somewhat :joy: They’re building from source now, but only the CLI tools, not the GUI. I vaguely remember they couldn’t get the Qt build to work for some reason.

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Here is the version I was able to build. This isn’t codesigned so you have to disable gatekeeper to run.

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Thank you! As the application gets updated, I assume you would need to compile it each time?

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This is right. Future versions would need to be compiled again. Where you able to open it with gatekeeper disabled?

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Unfortunately not - it tells me the .app damaged, but the .dmg opens.

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Try to dequarantine with sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MKVToolNix-92.0.app normally this helps against the problem with app damaged.

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A user over on Doom9’s forums has just let me know that the MacPorts project contains MKVToolNix builds for arm64 including the GUI.

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Wow, thanks - I’ve just installed this and it does indeed end up producing an Apple Silicon native MKVToolNix app! It also has its own terminal commands to update the app as you release new versions. I think this should be the solution to the Rosetta retirement issue.

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Thanks for the feedback. I’ve already added links to it on the downloads page. I concur, this will be my primary location I point users to once I’ve stopped building binaries myself.

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MacPorts is compiling it from source right? Why not make the MacPorts version available via download on the MKVToolNix page so that users who don’t have MacPorts can still download it?

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That would require me being able to compile for arm64 in the first place, and as I said I don’t have an arm64 mac & am not interested in buying one.

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That’s a problem I wasn’t thinking of. So without an arm mac you may not be able to compile for arm and if other users are providing binaries it won’t be properly codesigned so downloaders would need to find their way around gatekeeper. That’s the reason why my MKVToolNix binary couldn’t be opened. What I have found is that on the macports page they say that they have universal binaries but I don’t know if these can be build on an intel mac. dark_clefable did you get an universal binary?

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Well, my guess is that I won’t be able to run macOS itself on x86 at some point, making the whole discussion moot as I won’t be able to run it, never mind compile anything.

macOS has never been a fully supported OS for me, and this is just the point where I’m going to say goodbye to it.

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From reading the FAQs on the MacPorts site, I think it compiles based on your own architecture. It produced an Apple Silicon app for me (rather than universal), but I believe that if you undertook the same process on an x86 Mac, you’d get an Intel-compatible app. I don’t have any x86 hardware to test on though.

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I got the same “this is damaged” error, and after running the quarantine script it works! However, I’m curious what the “game plan” is for future releases…

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It’s good that it worked. I have also compiled MKVToolNix 93.0 now. Here you go: Gofile - Cloud Storage Made Simple You probably need to do the dequarantine step also with this file.

So if gatekeeper is enabled disable it with: sudo spctl --master-disable
Then dequarantine the app with: sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MKVToolNix-93.0.app

I hope it works.

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There’s no game plan. Once x86 emulation support is discontinued, I will not provide binaries (signed DMGs) anymore. I will point users to MacPorts. Anyone else is free to provide their own signed DMGs. The scripts I use and that work on ARM-based macs, too, will remain available, of course.

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That too worked! However, are you planning to continue doing this?
Also, what process do you need to go through to get it signed?

Also, also, it claims to be an “iOS” application in the System Settings Storage tab. I don’t think this matters because now I throw a file into MKVToolNix it compiles it argueably FASTER than it has ever before!