Apple ARM compatibility (Apple Silicon)

Obsidian is becoming a daily app for me. I also have an old MacBook that I have been using since 2012. I would like to wait to get a new ARM MacBook, however, if Obsidian isn’t supported for ARM, that would throw a wrench in my plans to get ARM MacBook.

Does anyone know if Obsidian will be supported on ARM Apple silicon?

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That’s what Rosetta 2 is for, I believe.

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Obsidian in an Electron app ( https://www.electronjs.org/ ) like VS Code, Discord, Skype, GitHub Desktop and thousands more… stay sure that it’ll be compatible with ARM macs and any other hardware from day 0

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I really want Obsidian for the iPad but after seeing the Apple announcement yesterday, I am intrigued at the possibilities of the Macbook Air running Obsidian . . . thoughts?

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MacBook Air with M1 chip is still running macOS (10 or 11) – so no reason Obsidian would not run on it.

99.99% chance Obsidian already runs on Apple Silicon using Rosetta 2 (emulation layer).

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what do you mean by ‘using Rosetta 2’? Would I have to run a different program to run Obsidian? (sorry if that’s an obvious question…)

Apple’s official announcement explains it in more detail than I can. :slightly_smiling_face: (the bit about Rosetta 2 is near the end.)

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Thanks, that helped. Had no idea what Rosetta is (or that it existed)…Found this in my search and thought it was interesting:

Sorry to break the news, but I guess we are in the 1% territory. No version of Obsidian runs on Apple Silicon as of now via Rosetta 2. Electron apps, like Slack, need to be updated and—so far—Slack is the only one that did it.

Eager to see an update, because I’m considering Roam otherwise. At least that one has a web interface if the Electron app is not brought up to speed. The attached image is Obsidian’s window on Apple Silicon. Having one of those here, I’d be happy to test any early release to make sure it works when it will be inevitably needed and required by many users.

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Licat said on Discord:

We’ll make new builds as soon as Electron provides stable builds for Apple sillcon

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Guess that will not take long…
VS Code (and many others with them) is also made on electron.
Reading the previews and tests of this new ARM based systems it seems like Apple has hit gold (for the n-tieth time) with this chip. That will certainly benefit Obsidian (even more speed).

Will it overtake Intel architecture? No hardware security flows discovered (yet). Guess (personal opinion) it want take long before these will come in the open… They have some great engineers with Apple but there still human and humans make mistakes… But that is not the object if this thread :wink:

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So there should be a build around already, because that’s available as of a month ago and Slack uses it. Zettlr is in the process because it’s apparently a breeze to just add the target.

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I’m glad to hear that an ARM build is planned. I’d love to run Obsidian on my ARM Chromebook.

Maybe we can let our beloved devs take a breath, they’ve been doing work everywhere and steadily releasing stuff, let’s leave them the time to do so :slight_smile: It will certainly come very soon.

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Absolutely! Now that we see that Rosetta doesn’t work with Obsidian, and Electron already does natively work on it, let’s wait for Obsidian devs to rightfully update and get it to work on Apple Silicon whenever they are ready for it.

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EXACTLY!!!..oh…wait…my Apple Silicon MacMini delivers on Tuesday…so MONDAY is a must!!! (:face_with_hand_over_mouth:)

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Thank you so much!

We will work on a native version for apple silicon as soon as electron AND the relative building toolchain is updated.

Let’s try to be clear…do you know whether Obsidian as a current Electron app works on an Apple Mac device with the Apple Silicon M1 chip NOW using Rosetta?