Option A: Run simulations from a terminal (ARM-CPU)

To run a simulation on MacOS (ARM) from terminal, you need to download nextnano executables compiled for that operating system and processor, which you can find on our download page Downloads.

Optional: install Rosetta 2

Alternatively, you can install Rosetta 2 to be able to run applications compiled for Intel MacOS. You can install it by using the following command:

softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

You can now run all executables compiled for Intel MacOS, please follow the documentation for Option A: Run simulations from a terminal (Intel-CPU).

Status: Successfully tested on MacOS Sequoia - version 15

License activation

For detailed instructions, please refer to our documentation on License Activation.

Example:

cd license_activator
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine nextnanoLicenseActivator_macOS_ARMCPU
./nextnanoLicenseActivator_macOS_ARMCPU --firstname Homer --lastname Simpson --email homer.simpson@nextnano.com --institution 'Springfield Nuclear Power Plant' --licensekey homer.simpson@nextnano.com-2025-12-31-de-1vmh --outpath ../License/

Install Homebrew

See Homebrew documentation and install Homebrew.

Furthermore, run the following two codes as Homebrew requires:

(echo; echo 'eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> /Users/username/.zprofile

eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"

Install gcc

Our solvers require some libraries to be present on your machine. Please run:

brew install gcc-11

Run simulation

Please refer to the documentation of command line arguments for the respective nextnano tool nextnano++, nextnano³, and nextnano.NEGF to learn how to invoke the executable from Terminal.

Examples:

Run nextnano++

cd nextnano++/scripts
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ../bin/nextnano++_clang_macOS_ARMCPU
./nextnano++_macOS_ARM.sh

Run nextnano³

cd nextnano3/scripts
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ../bin/nextnano3_gcc_macOS_ARMCPU
./nextnano3_free_macOS_ARM.sh
./nextnano3_macOS_ARM.sh

Last update: 11/06/2026