MacTeX-2025 requires macOS 10.14 or higher. These systems are named Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia. It runs natively on both Arm and Intel machines. The same source code is used to compile both types of code, so Apple's Arm and Intel machines are on exactly the same footing. All install packages are developer-signed and notarized by Apple.

One program, asymptote, does not run on Mojave but runs on Catalina and higher. This program is a recent addition to TeX Live and was seldom used on Mojave.

Click the link below to download. While downloading, please skim the rest of the page. Users who run into trouble sometimes write us without noticing that the solution is on this very page.

X11 is an open source windowing system used by Linux systems. Most Macintosh users can ignore it. An open source version of X11 called XQuartz is available for the Macintosh. It can be found here. If you use X11, you should update to the latest version of XQuartz, 2.8.5. The TeX Live programs xdvi, pdfopen, and pdfclose require X11. Ghostscript comes with two binaries, gs-X11 and gs-noX11, where gs-X11 has support for X11 and gs-noX11 does not. When Ghostscript is first installed, a symbolic link named gs is created in /usr/local/bin. If X11 is present, gs points to gs-X11; otherwise it points to gs-noX11.

If you are having trouble downloading MacTeX, note that the download link points to a "multiplexer" site which parcels out requests to various up-to-date CTAN mirrors. Occasionally users have trouble getting the package from this multiplexer. In that case, choose a specific mirror on this mirror page.

MacTeX is a very large package. If your network is noisy, you might want to try downloading and installing BasicTeX. See Smaller Download. BasicTeX is very much smaller, and yet has most files, fonts, and programs to process TeX, so this is a rapid way to get a working TeX. BasicTeX need not be uninstalled before installing MacTeX, so once you convince yourself that our packages work, you can return to the main task of installing MacTeX. TUG strongly recommends the full MacTeX for most users, including beginners,

The installer first writes a large number of packages to /usr/local/texlive/2025. Then it runs a postinstall script which configures the distribution. The installer reports the moment when the script first starts running. If the script run takes longer than ten minutes, Apple aborts the installation and reports an error.

The installer's "Window" menu offers to show a Log of the installation. If your computer is slow, it is not a good idea to show this window during installation, because writing the items takes up part of those allotted ten minutes. But after installation ends, the Log window can be opened. The 10-minute error would be reported in a line near the end of the log file, which reads

   Terminating PKInstall Task. Task has exceeded its 600 seconds of runtime.

By the time this error occurs, the installation has been completely set up and some final scripts are running. You can finish these final tasks yourself. Find the "Terminal" program in /Applications/Utilities and run it. Enter each line below in Terminal, pushing RETURN after the line is complete. Since Unix is picky about syntax, it is easiest to copy the lines from the display below. When you are done, MacTeX-2025 is fully configured and ready to use.

   sudo /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/universal-darwin/mktexlsr
   sudo /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/universal-darwin/updmap-sys
   sudo /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/universal-darwin/fmtutil-sys --missing
   sudo /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/universal-darwin/mktexlsr 
 

In one known case, a machine was so slow that even the setup material was not finished after ten minutes, so the above solution failed. Users who run into that case should download and run postinstall2025.sh.