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 macOS and Linux.
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.exe ./nextnanoLicenseActivator_macOS_ARMCPU.exe --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 "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> /Users/username/.zprofileeval "$(/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.exe ./nextnano++_macOS_ARM.sh
Run nextnano³
cd nextnano3/scripts xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ../bin/nextnano3_gcc_macOS_ARMCPU.exe ./nextnano3_free_macOS_ARM.sh ./nextnano3_macOS_ARM.sh
Last update: 29/01/2026