Is MATLAB supported on Apple Silicon Macs?

Macs with an Apple silicon processor such as the Apple M1 have two ways to run applications. Applications built for Apple silicon run natively, while apps built for Intel processors run in the Rosetta 2 environment. Which method does MATLAB support? 

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Rosetta 2 

MATLAB R2020b Update 3 and later are supported on Apple silicon Macs through the Rosetta 2 translation environment. Earlier releases of MATLAB may run but are not fully supported. 

There are two products which are available on Intel-based Macs but are not compatible with the Rosetta 2 environment: Polyspace and Simulink Desktop Real-Time. 

Native Apple Silicon 

A version of MATLAB which runs natively on Apple silicon is in development. This answer will be updated with more information as development progresses. 

[Xiao Zang]

Kudos to Matlab team for the quick move!!

[Ben Joyce]

Yes, this is great news.

[Zonghao zou]

Do we have any ideas as in when the native apple silicon version will be avaliable? (sometime next year? )

[cr]

@MathWorksSupportTeam

When will Matlab for native M1 be available? Sharing some kind of outlook would be immensely helpful in making better decisions.

[Michel Georges Decker]

Probably a dumb question but: is Simulink Desktop Real-Time needed for Models that are not calculated in real-time?

[cr]

No, it's not required.

[Mohammad Sami]

For the optimized versions, would MATLAB be use the built in neural engine and machine learning accelerator for the deep learning toolbox and statistics and machine learning toolbox?

[Irene Mendez Guerra]

Will the optimized versions enable GPU acceleration on Apple silicon?

[Ravi Kohli]

Does this mean that MATLAB doesn't work on the new apple silicon devices for the time being?

[John Johnson]

"Kudos to Matlab team for the quick move!!"

Apple Silicon has been available to developers since last summer.

[Walter Roberson]

Developer Transition Kit was announced June 22, 2020, which was two days into Summer. Some developers received it about June 28, 2020 or June 29, 2020 https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/29/first-benchmarks-surface-for-apples-arm-based-developer-transition-kit/

So if "last summer" refers to the summer most immediately past, then Yes, it was available to developers "since last summer".

The R2020b Pre-Release was available to MATLAB beta test users no later than June 10, 2020.... which was before Apple Silicon became available. Mathworks policy is that after a pre-release has been made available to customers, that bug fixes may be made, and new features under trial may be removed before actual release, but that no new features may go in: internal Mathworks developers who do not have their features ready for external testing by the internal cut-off date have to wait for the next release (or at least an Update), even if the feature becomes internally ready even just a few days later.

The official R2020b release date was September 16, 2020. The official release date of the Apple M1 to consumers was September 17, 2020.

Thus, there was no realistic chance that Mathworks would have added Apple Silicon support to the R2020b release.

[Mike Bryant]

When will MATLAB R2020b Update 3 be available for download? I just tried to download and the latest available is Update 2.

[Bruno Luong]

Release 3 is already available since few days (for Windows). You might need you check with Help->Check for Update

[Winneyy]

How can I get in touch with up-to-date information or updates concering the availability of native MATLAB for MacBook Silicon?, through this post or through official post on your website?

[Luke]

Please do update this answer with more information as it becomes available. In particular: will 2021b have ARM support?

[Walter Roberson]

R2020b already has ARM support -- through Rosetta2 .

[BISHAL Kr DAS]

when can I expect the Native Silicon version to come out?

[Rik]

I doubt you will get anything more than speculation. Mathworks will probably mention it in the release notes for the prerelease (note that in general that would be under NDA).

[LeChat]

Will Matlab next version enable GPU acceleration on Apple silicon? Will the Deep Learning and Image processing toolboxes take advantage of the M1 integrated GPUs and neural engine?

[Rik]

@LeChat Mathworks generally doesn't discuss plans for the future in public (you could contact support, who will either refuse to talk specifics, or offer an NDA). Some next version of Matlab will probably enable GPU acceleration on Apple ARM chips, but I doubt R2021b will be that version. As R2021a is only working through Rosetta 2, I expect full support of more niche features (i.e. everything except the base product) will take a while.

[Walter Roberson]

"Will Matlab next version enable GPU acceleration on Apple silicon?"

No. Do not expect that for numerous years. Mathworks only supports Nvidia CUDA, and would have to completely redesign its gpu acceleration tool chain for anything else.

Mathworks goes where the market is, and research work is currently mostly on Nvidia, with second place in the market being IBM, and AMD based development far behind those two. Apple M1 development is comparatively small at the moment, and has no support for Windows or Linux. When Mathworks finally diversifies GPU it would make more sense for it to go after IBM (researchers) or AMD (commonly installed on desktops and laptops) before going after M1.

[LeChat]

Thank you both for your answers and views on Mathworks perspectives. For the mac users (actually with Intel cpu and latest macOS, or M1+ Silicon chips), do you know if it is possible to use a eGPU just for Matlab? I know Nvidia gpu drivers are not available in the latest MacOS versions anymore, and that nvidia gpus are not Metal compatible, but is there a built-in matlab support for a Nvidia eGPU option, so that the OS uses the integrated gpu of the computer while Matlab uses the eGPU acceleration?

[Walter Roberson]

There is no built-in support for egpu. MATLAB just uses whatever drivers are available

[Walter Roberson]

Also, the M1 requires Big Sur (or later), but there is no NVIDIA eGPU support for Big Sur, as Apple made it difficult to add shared drivers other than those approved by Apple -- and Apple apparently won't approve any eGPU drivers that are not designed for Metal.

[Ramy Elkhazendar]

Can we get this moving faster. Its been 5 months now! need a Native version ASAP! Performance gains are too good to pass

[Walter Roberson]

Well, 7 months if you count from the time that the M1 became available to consumers. One release has happened, and it improved the M1 performance and made more of it native. There will not be another release until close to the September equinox.

You should have a look, by the way, at Microsoft's efforts to implement for ARM. Their 64 bit OS for ARM barely works at present, and has not reached "beta" level.

[Justin Kottinger]

I am having major issues with MATLAB 2021a on my m1 Mac. The issues include: sudden crashes, unresponsive application, incorrect app loading, etc. The behavior is so terrible that I some days I give up trying to use the app entirely. Is anyone else having these issues? Will a native version be available anytime soon?

[Antony Ware]

I've started seeing crashes too, seemingly related to the editor. Selecting and pasting text often (almost always) results in an immediate crash. I'm running the latest 2021a on an M1 Macbook Pro. Anyone else?

[Joris]

Same issue here. Sudden crashes, seem to happen after pasting text.

Slow response to clicking with cursor, running and running sections. Where on my pc runnnig a section would be instant now it takes seconds. Especially the slow cursors is annoying, make selecting sections and text nearly impossible. Clicking on save now takes multiple seconds instead of instant response time.

Specs:

Macbook Air M1 16GB

Matlab R2021a

Any updates on M1 release?

[Anders Eriksson]

I can confirm that this issue has been appearing in R2020b as well. So it seems like there is something thats related to changes made by apple in macOS 11.3-11.4

[Dror Liran]

edit: I have updeted to update 5 and everything is much better

I experince the same issues with R2020b, is extreamly slow response.

Any solution for that?

MBP M1 16gb, macos 11.3

[Sangjae]

When will native M1 support be available? The current version is so slow that it can't be used in practice and often gets stuck. I'm currently switching between Windows and Ubuntu as a workaround, but it's very inconvenient.

[Rik]

@Sangjae They will probably not make any public statements prior to updating this answer. Any definitive answer will probably be very short term (e.g. in the release notes of a prerelease). I would not expect it for R2021b.

Answer 2

[BH]

I installed 2020b on my M1 MBP today. Just thought I’d post here to let you know it runs even if it’s not officially supported

[Pierre Morel]

Could you post your best bench(5) results in Matlab on the MBP through rosetta ?

[Bruno Luong]

Can you post the result of

bench

command? Thanks.

[cr]

Viola! Appreciate you dropping an update to confirm it works. Can you please post results and screenshots of the following bench command?

>> bench(5)

What's your RAM 8GB or 16GB?

Thanks!

[BH]

8 GB RAM and 256 GB disk on R2020b Update 1 (9.9.0.1495850)

[Bruno Luong]

Anyone would bet how much gain we woud get when it runs without rosetta?

[cr]

Thanks mate.

Emulation seems to be working well on compuations but graphics are slow. Definitely looking forward to see Matlab running natively on Apple silicon.

[Wenqing Kang]

Hey BH, could you please let me know how you installed 2020b? I downloaded installer but the M1 chip Macbook Pro won't let me install, saying I need contact the administrator while I am the administrator. I believe we have the same Macbook model. Thanks.

[BH]

I didn't have any issues installing it normally so can't help you there sorry

[clappertown]

I tried Matlab R2019a on Macbook Pro 13 w/ M1 and for the same code it took 525s to finish, comparing to 456s running in Matlab R2019a on Macbook Pro 16" i9@2.4GHz.

[Shinya]

Wenquig,

This method worked for me.

I went to /Volumes/matlab_R2020b_maci64 in the terminal after mounting the image and did

# sudo open InstallForMacOSX.app

You'd have to type your password in after this command.

[cr]

Clappertown Thanks for sharing your findings. Did you check equivalency of the results from both computers?

[Richard]

Really?? Tell us please, how does the performance compare?

[Antony Ware]

I'm running 2019a, and bench produced the following scores: 0.1272 0.0836 0.0151 0.0836 3.9532 3.8510

This is overall about 60% as fast as an Intel i5 2.6GHz macbook pro, apparently.

[Amit Singh]

This video is helpful for knowing the performance of MATLAB on Macbook pro M1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNAwmu_tK7Y

[Ravi Kohli]

Thanks for the post. Does MATLAB actually work in that current (unsupported) state or is it quite buggy/glitchy?

[Ethan Woo]

I was having trouble getting R2020b to install on my M1 mac mini today, but I JUST got it!! I kept getting the "You need to contact administrator" message. I tried messing around with the terminal command (sudo open blah blah) but that didn't work. I just kept trying and trying. I also installed rosetta 2 using

/usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

From there, I right-clicked InstallForMacOSX and selected "show package contents" - then, I navigated to Contents > MacOS. Then I double-clicked InstallForMacOSX. This brings up a terminal window that basically does nothing because it can't find a var file. So i opened another terminal window, and navigated to that crazy var file. Then, I opened the matlab_R2020b_maci64.dmg file on my desktop and double clicked the InstallForMacOSX and it actually started bouncing for the first time..

I have no idea what made it finally work. Maybe just luck... but hopefully this helps someone!

[Annie Leonhart]

All you need to do to make it work is go to "show package content" Matlab/xxxx/bin/maci64/matlabwindow.app that's pretty much it. Click that and it'll run. Nothing special you need to do. Create an alias on your dock.

Been using 2020b for weeks with 0 issues. Runs just as good as it does on PC. Fully functional.

[Ronald Prentice]

I have 2021a update 2 and it's stil very slow. Any idea when the version that will run natively on the M1 chip will be available?

[Walter Roberson]

I expect R2023b for the fully native version.

Answer 3

[Saurabh Vyas]

I feel MATLAB Online is the way to go till we get the version built to run on Apple silicon. It's got almost everything students require and can be run on safari/chrome without an install. It also has Simulink support!!

MATLAB online

[Ji Eun Lim]

Is MATLAB online as good as the app?

[Walter Roberson]

Is MATLAB online as good as the app?

Is a Pick-Up Truck as good as a Jaguar ? Maybe not, but a Pick-Up truck is good enough for a lot of things.

[leu ryan]

But it's not useful if the data is very big to process

[Walter Roberson]

MATLAB Online is not intended as a heavy duty computing facility. It might perhaps be closer to Tuk Tuk than Jaguar. But in some cases, Tuk Tuk can be very useful to have around.

Answer 4

[Annie Leonhart]

All you need to do to make it work is go to "show package content" Matlab/xxxx/bin/maci64/matlabwindow.app that's pretty much it. Click that and it'll run. Nothing special you need to do. Create an alias on your dock.

Been using 2020b for weeks with 0 issues. Runs just as good as it does on PC. Fully functional.

[AKASH PERUMALLA]

Can you please say how to install MATLAB Latest in new MacBook Air m1 It is asking for InstallForMacOSX.app Please help I'm new to mac OS

[Konstantin Yem]

I did the same steps, the matlab window appears and then closes down with that message bellow.

Could you please help what this might be ?

Last login: Fri Mar 12 20:22:04 on ttys000

@-MacBook-Pro ~ % /Applications/MATLAB_R2020b.app/bin/maci64/MATLABWindow.app/Contents/MacOS/MATLABWindow ; exit;

Cannot locate or initialize class com/mathworks/jmi/OpaqueJavaInterface.

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/mathworks/jmi/OpaqueJavaInterface

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mathworks.jmi.OpaqueJavaInterface

at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:382)

at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)

at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:349)

at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)

Saving session...

...copying shared history...

...saving history...truncating history files...

...completed.

[Process completed]

Answer 5

[Moritz Kb]

It works fine on the new MBA although battery consumption is huge, meaning 3hrs from 100% to 0%.

Hopefully this will improve when it’s running natively... Also 2D and 3D times in ‘bench’ are very Slow probably because they don’t run on the GPU cores?

[Tony Davis]

The MacOS 11.1 update (out today) improved 2D and 3D 'bench' times by about a factor of 3 compared to 11.0 on my M1-based Mac Mini. Matlab 2020b Update 3 works extremely well on this setup.

[Moritz Kb]

Agreed! 2D and 3D times increased 10 and 15 times respectively from r2020b update 2 running on 11.0 to r2020b update 3 on 11.1!

[Chuck Cooper]

Is 2020b Update 3 available to all Big Sur Mac users with MATLAB maintenance, or only as a beta release?

[Walter Roberson]

It is available to everyone who is running R2020b. You should see a yellow bell near the upper right of the command window that you can click to upgrade. Or under the Help menu you can ask to check for updates.

[Walter Roberson]

Help -> Check for Updates .

The Add-On Manager will come up and list R2020b Release 3 and give you a chance to click Update. A MathWorks Update Installer will come up that has a Continue button; at that point, save any files you need and quit MATLAB (leaving the Installer open.) Then click Continue in the installer.

[Chuck Cooper]

Thanks to Walter Roberson! But when I tried installing 2020b Update 3 today, I got a message or error about not being authorized to do it. Update 3 was listed as the thing you'd get today when you download the MATLAB 2020b. (I guess that's new?) So I was not starting with a version of 2020b, as Roberson assumed. Anyhow, I chatted with Mathworks support. They are having problems with this M1 stuff and at their request I sent them a log dump of what happens when I tried to click on the "InstallMatlabForBlahBlah" item in a little window. BTW, the Mathworks tech says Roberson is amazing! But they have to vet stuff themselves.

Support said to check back in several days or a week. Boo... I suggested that perhaps as a workaround they could provide some way for a user to download 2020b update TWO and then update that to 3 as Roberson said. Mathworks said he would pass that suggestion up the chain.

[Walter Roberson]

Ah, sorry, I thought you already had Update 2.

[Chuck Cooper]

Yeah, I refrained from trying to install 2020b update 2 a few weeks ago because I thought it might cause problems later... Heh-heh. But thanks so much for your tip.

[Chuck Cooper]

SUCCESS: I did the stuff described earlier (December 4) by Ethan Woo in this thread and it worked. That included installing Rosetta (perhaps since I had never loaded any version of 2020b), and right-clicking on the package contents, etc., as described by Woo. I didn't have the problem he mentioned with the var file. It's also possible that the very simple solution suggested above by Annie Leonhart on December 8 would have worked. One other thing I did was to update Big Sur from what my Mac mini M1 shipped with a few weeks to the latest version (11.1) as of today, December 18.

[Amit Singh]

Benchmark for 2020b update 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGLcRF12fWU

2D and 3D scores have improved.

[Mattia Busana]

Does someone have problems with the interface? On my MB Pro M1 everything works fine, except the UI (for example Save and Open button) that is extremely laggish, I need to click 3-4 times to activate the button.

Answer 6

[Ongun Palaoglu]

I am using mac mini m1, it was very good. right now it is very slow, clicking on function takes a delay. i dont understand why

Answer 7

[Pieter Durman]

I have just bought a new MacBook pro M1 2020. I mosly use the Deep learning toolbox and Global Optimisation toolbox for university work. It has worked very well so far.

[LeChat]

Thank you for your feedback. What happens when you run:

gpuDevice

Can you use gpuArrays?

[Walter Roberson]

Unlikely, as the M1 do not use Nvidia GPUs.

Answer 8

[Kumar Yashasvi]

yes, the newer version of matlab will surely support

Answer 9

[master TOM]

Will MATLAB R2021a run natively on Apple sillicon?

[Walter Roberson]

Mathworks has not announced one way or another.

However, if you have Software Maintenance Service then you could install R2021a pre-release under Non-disclosure Agreement and see what the release notes say.

[Steven Lord]

The System Requirements page for release R2021a for Mac does include a note discussing Apple Silicon.

Answer 10

[cr]

I cannot believe the results (below) I'm seeing on my MBP-M1 with R2019b. R2018a showed slower benchmarks as expected for Matlab running with Rosetta especially on graphics front. But strangely R2019b is zipping fast.

Results on R2019b, connected to power and no peripherals.

Out of curiosity, I connected an external monitor whose resolution is only somewhat lower than MBPs (2560x1080) and re-ran bench. Graphics seemed way faster, like running Matlab on Intel. The results are incredible.

Results on external monitor:

[Walter Roberson]

Thanks for the benchmarks, cr !

[cr]

Walter,

Any thoughts on the performance jump from 2018a to 2019b?

Thanks.

[Bruno Luong]

IIRC you can't easily compare bench between versions.

The algo itself change, the bench tests change, then reference machine change.

[Walter Roberson]

True, when you look at the release notes, every few releases it will take note that bench() has been revised. Mostly it is revised to make it "harder", which makes it less sensitive to timing noise as hardware gets fast enough that small differences in short completion times could bias the computations badly.

[Mattia Busana]

Any report from 2020b?

[Bruno Luong]

Already reported. None with update 3 though.

Answer 11

[Gal Barkai]

Just got MBP with the M1, there are "straight out of the box" benchmarks for 2020b through Rosetta 2:

The grahics scores are REALLY bad right now, but the rest are decent. Hopefully it will improve soon

Answer 12

[cr]

UPDATE 1: Text comparison tool in R2019b not working on M1 mac. Got the following error popup.

[Colin Fraser]

If you are still experiencing this issue, please create a service request below.

https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html

-Colin Fraser

[cr]

Yes, the issue still exists. But since MW has already said versions prior to 2020b, update3 are not supported, there is no point opening a ticket.

Answer 13

[Petar Apostolov]

Well i got this and i am pleased with that. I know it will get with the next updates even faster. And for that price range... I have the Mac Mini with 16 gb and 512 ssd. But strange how fast 2019 is.

[cr]

Is this 2020b with update 3?

Answer 14

[FP Am]

For anyone interested:

Macbook Air M1, 8 GB RAM. Pretty zippy!

This is run through terminal+Atom, MATLAB Version: 9.9.0.1570001 (R2020b) Update 4

[Fab Cor]

Would you mind sharing the link from where I can download the latest update of MATLAB for Apple M1?

[Walter Roberson]

R2020b Update 3 or later runs on Apple M1 under Rosetta2; not all parts of it work yet. Polyspace in particular is not available for M1 yet.