Step-by-step install for the signed Outlier DMG on macOS 12+ Apple Silicon. The whole sequence below stays on the Mac.
Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 12 or later, the unified-memory minimum that the chosen tier requires (6 GB for Nano, 12 GB for Lite, 16 GB for Quick, 24 GB for Core and Vision 3.8, 64 GB for Plus). Internet is required only for the one-time model download.
The DMG is signed by Developer ID 9N3Z6J63T4 and notarized via Apple’s notarytool service. spctl --assess reports accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID on a clean machine.
First launch takes roughly 50 seconds while the bundled Python framework unpacks and warms; later launches skip that step. If Gatekeeper refuses the app outright rather than showing the ordinary first-open prompt, the download was almost certainly truncated — re-pull the DMG and check the size before opening it again. Apple Silicon only: M1 through M4, macOS 12 or later, and Intel Macs cannot run it at all.
9N3Z6J63T4), so right-click + Open clears it permanently.xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Outlier.app bypasses this.The cloud equivalent of installing a coding assistant is creating an account and pasting an API key. Outlier’s install replaces both with a signed DMG.
The DMG is signed by Developer ID 9N3Z6J63T4 and notarized via Apple’s notarytool service. spctl --assess reports accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID on a clean machine.
First launch takes roughly 50 seconds while the bundled Python framework unpacks and warms; later launches skip that step. If Gatekeeper refuses the app outright rather than showing the ordinary first-open prompt, the download was almost certainly truncated — re-pull the DMG and check the size before opening it again. Apple Silicon only: M1 through M4, macOS 12 or later, and Intel Macs cannot run it at all.
The DMG is signed by Developer ID 9N3Z6J63T4 and notarized via Apple’s notarytool service. spctl --assess reports accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID on a clean machine.
First launch takes roughly 50 seconds while the bundled Python framework unpacks and warms; later launches skip that step. If Gatekeeper refuses the app outright rather than showing the ordinary first-open prompt, the download was almost certainly truncated — re-pull the DMG and check the size before opening it again. Apple Silicon only: M1 through M4, macOS 12 or later, and Intel Macs cannot run it at all.
This guide does not claim feature parity with cloud-side workflows for “how to install outlier on a mac”. Specifically, the product surface in v1.11.469 covers chat, file attachment, the local agent loop, project scoping, and the model picker. Cross-device sync, team workspaces, and shared session history are out of scope and are not on the v1.9 backlog either.
The DMG ships a frozen Python 3.11 framework, mlx_lm 0.31.3, the FastAPI sidecar, and the Tauri front end as a single self-contained app bundle. There is no separate Python installation step, no virtualenv, no pip dependency drift. The downside is the 50-second cold-boot warmup; the upside is reproducibility across Macs.
After install, the model picker shows six tiers in display order: Nano (2.37 GB), Lite (5.04 GB), Quick (15.61 GB), Core (15.13 GB), Vision 3.8 (15.5 GB), and Plus (209 GB). Tiers above the Mac’s unified-memory headroom appear greyed out.
5 steps, zero network requests after the model is downloaded. The complete install touches three locations: /Applications/Outlier.app, ~/Library/Application Support/Outlier/, and ~/.outlier/.
Requires Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, or M4) — Intel Macs are not supported. macOS 12+.
Open weights ship constantly and most are not worth your disk. When one beats a tier Outlier already has, on hardware you already own, we say so and what it replaces. That is the only reason we email.
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Outlier runs entirely on your Mac. No prompts leave the device. macOS 12+ on Apple Silicon (arm64). Apache 2.0 model weights. Back to home.