Deploy MinIO on MacOS
This page documents deploying MinIO onto Apple MacOS hosts.
MinIO officially supports MacOS operating systems in service status, which is typically 3 years from initial release. At the time of writing, that includes:
macOS 14 (Sonoma) (Recommended)
macOS 13 (Ventura)
macOS 12 (Monterey)
MinIO may run on older or out-of-support macOS releases, with limited support or troubleshooting from either MinIO or RedHat.
MinIO supports both Intel and ARM-based macOS hardware and provides distinct binaries for each architecture. Ensure you download the correct binary as per the documentation for your host system.
The procedure includes guidance for deploying Single-Node Multi-Drive (SNMD) and Single-Node Single-Drive (SNSD) topologies in support of early development and evaluation environments.
MinIO does not officially support Multi-Node Multi-Drive (MNMD) “Distributed” configurations on MacOS hosts.
Considerations
Review Checklists
Ensure you have reviewed our published Hardware, Software, and Security checklists before attempting this procedure.
Erasure Coding Parity
MinIO automatically determines the default erasure coding configuration for the cluster based on the total number of nodes and drives in the topology.
You can configure the per-object parity setting when you set up the cluster or let MinIO select the default (EC:4
for production-grade clusters).
Parity controls the relationship between object availability and storage on disk. Use the MinIO Erasure Code Calculator for guidance in selecting the appropriate erasure code parity level for your cluster.
While you can change erasure parity settings at any time, objects written with a given parity do not automatically update to the new parity settings.
Procedure
1. Download the MinIO Binary
Open a Terminal and run the following command to install the latest stable MinIO package using Homebrew.
brew install minio/stable/minio
Important
If you previously installed the MinIO server using brew install minio
, then we recommend that you reinstall from minio/stable/minio
instead.
brew uninstall minio
brew install minio/stable/minio
Open a Terminal, then use the following commands to download the latest stable MinIO binary, set it to executable, and install it to the system $PATH
:
curl -O https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/darwin-arm64/minio chmod +x ./minio sudo mv ./minio /usr/local/bin/
Open a Terminal, then use the following commands to download the latest stable MinIO binary, set it to executable, and install it to the system $PATH
:
curl -O https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/darwin-amd64/minio chmod +x ./minio sudo mv ./minio /usr/local/bin/
2. Enable TLS Connectivity
You can skip this step to deploy without TLS enabled. MinIO strongly recommends against non-TLS deployments outside of early development.
Create or provide Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates to MinIO to automatically enable HTTPS-secured connections between the server and clients.
MinIO expects the default certificate names of private.key
and public.crt
for the private and public keys respectively.
Place the certificates in a dedicated directory:
mkdir -P /opt/minio/certs
cp private.key /opt/minio/certs
cp public.crt /opt/minio/certs
MinIO verifies client certificates against the OS/System’s default list of trusted Certificate Authorities.
To enable verification of third-party or internally-signed certificates, place the CA file in the /opt/minio/certs/CAs
folder.
The CA file should include the full chain of trust from leaf to root to ensure successful verification.
For more specific guidance on configuring MinIO for TLS, including multi-domain support via Server Name Indication (SNI), see Network Encryption (TLS).
Certificates for Early Development
For local testing or development environments, you can use the MinIO certgen to mint self-signed certificates. For example, the following command generates a self-signed certificate with a set of IP and DNS Subject Alternate Names (SANs) associated to the MinIO Server hosts:
certgen -host "localhost,minio-*.example.net"
Place the generated public.crt
and private.key
into the /path/to/certs
directory to enable TLS for the MinIO deployment.
Applications can use the public.crt
as a trusted Certificate Authority to allow connections to the MinIO deployment without disabling certificate validation.
3. Create the MinIO Environment File
Create an environment file at /etc/default/minio
.
The MinIO service uses this file as the source of all environment variables used by MinIO and the minio.service
file.
Modify the example to reflect your deployment topology.
Use Single-Node Multi-Drive deployments in development and evaluation environments. You can also use them for smaller storage workloads which can tolerate data loss or unavailability due to node downtime.
# Set the volumes MinIO uses at startup
# The command uses MinIO expansion notation {x...y} to denote a
# sequential series.
#
# The following specifies a single host with 4 drives at the specified location
#
# The command includes the port that the MinIO server listens on
# (default 9000).
# If you run without TLS, change https -> http
MINIO_VOLUMES="https://minio1.example.net:9000/mnt/drive{1...4}/minio"
# Set all MinIO server command-line options
#
# The following explicitly sets the MinIO Console listen address to
# port 9001 on all network interfaces.
# The default behavior is dynamic port selection.
MINIO_OPTS="--console-address :9001 --certs-dir /opt/minio/certs"
# Set the root username.
# This user has unrestricted permissions to perform S3 and
# administrative API operations on any resource in the deployment.
#
# Defer to your organizations requirements for superadmin user name.
MINIO_ROOT_USER=minioadmin
# Set the root password
#
# Use a long, random, unique string that meets your organizations
# requirements for passwords.
MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD=minio-secret-key-CHANGE-ME
Use Single-Node Single-Drive (“Standalone”) deployments in early development and evaluation environments. MinIO does not recommend Standalone deployments in production, as the loss of the node or its storage medium results in data loss.
# Set the volume MinIO uses at startup
#
# The following specifies the drive or folder path
MINIO_VOLUMES="/mnt/drive1/minio"
# Set all MinIO server command-line options
#
# The following explicitly sets the MinIO Console listen address to
# port 9001 on all network interfaces.
# The default behavior is dynamic port selection.
MINIO_OPTS="--console-address :9001 --certs-dir /opt/minio/certs"
# Set the root username.
# This user has unrestricted permissions to perform S3 and
# administrative API operations on any resource in the deployment.
#
# Defer to your organizations requirements for superadmin user name.
MINIO_ROOT_USER=minioadmin
# Set the root password
#
# Use a long, random, unique string that meets your organizations
# requirements for passwords.
MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD=minio-secret-key-CHANGE-ME
Specify any other environment variables or server command-line options as required by your deployment.
4. Start the MinIO Server
The following command starts the MinIO Server attached to the current terminal/shell window:
export MINIO_CONFIG_ENV_FILE=/etc/default/minio
minio server --console-address :9001
The command output resembles the following:
MinIO Object Storage Server
Copyright: 2015-2024 MinIO, Inc.
License: GNU AGPLv3 - https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
Version: RELEASE.2024-06-07T16-42-07Z (go1.22.4 linux/amd64)
API: https://minio-1.example.net:9000 https://203.0.113.10:9000 https://127.0.0.1:9000
RootUser: minioadmin
RootPass: minioadmin
WebUI: https://minio-1.example.net:9001 https://203.0.113.10:9001 https://127.0.0.1:9001
RootUser: minioadmin
RootPass: minioadmin
CLI: https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/reference/minio-mc.html#quickstart
$ mc alias set 'myminio' 'https://minio-1.example.net:9000' 'minioadmin' 'minioadmin'
Docs: https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/index.html
Status: 1 Online, 0 Offline.
The API
block lists the network interfaces and port on which clients can access the MinIO S3 API.
The Console
block lists the network interfaces and port on which clients can access the MinIO Web Console.
To run the MinIO server process in the background or as a daemon, defer to your MacOS OS documentation for best practices and procedures.
5. Connect to the Deployment
Open your browser and access any of the MinIO hostnames at port :9001
to open the MinIO Console login page.
For example, https://minio1.example.com:9001
.
Log in with the MINIO_ROOT_USER and MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD from the previous step.

You can use the MinIO Console for general administration tasks like Identity and Access Management, Metrics and Log Monitoring, or Server Configuration. Each MinIO server includes its own embedded MinIO Console.
Follow the installation instructions for mc
on your local host.
Run mc --version
to verify the installation.
If your MinIO deployment uses third-party or self-signed TLS certificates, copy the CA files to ~/.mc/certs/CAs
to allow mc
Once installed, create an alias for the MinIO deployment:
mc alias set myminio https://minio-1.example.net:9000 USERNAME PASSWORD
Change the hostname, username, and password to reflect your deployment. The hostname can be any MinIO node in the deployment. You can also specify the hostname load balancer, reverse proxy, or similar network control plane that handles connections to the deployment.
6. Next Steps
TODO