I wouldn’t use an M1 mac for any unreal dev at all, even a ■■■■ windows machine with intel graphics would be better. I would only ever use an m1 mac for remote compiling from a main windows dev machine. Fingers crossed that 4.27 fixes the editor on arm macs.
3 Likes
So i got my hands on an M1, same problems at first.
But i got it to work stable now (1-2 weeks without crashes) by cooking content for Mac and allowing the editor to use the cooked content.
Project Settings:
- Project > Supported Platforms > Enable Mac
- Platforms > Mac > Enable Force 32bit Floating Point Precision (not sure if necessary)
- Platforms > Mac > Architectures to Package For (Experimental) > choose Apple Silicon
- Engine > Cooker > Enable Allow Cooked Content In The Editor
now in the editor let it cook for Mac - File > Cook content for Mac
and let it cook.
(Also i’m running File > Validate Data to let it pre-compile a lot before starting work with the editor.)
Other factors like render settings or project size (my machine here has only 8GB) don’t seem to make a difference with stability.
A bigger desktop example project from the launcher (infiltrator demo) might run nicely for a long time but a small basic ThirdPersonTemplate can crash right after opening it.
Editor FPS performance humiliates a 3500€/$ MacbookPro (16fps vs 120fps in ActionRPG Example).
But, like others already stated, compile times are slower so coders would benefit from an intel-cpu for better compile times.
8 Likes
Still no issues? I’m weary of reinstalling as it bricked my Mac last time and I’m out of warranty.
Just trying to write some blueprint code without killing my back at my desk or being stuck inside 
No issues here, tried several projects of different sizes.
I hope it’s not just me 
But no one can give a guarantee. If you worry about a bricked system, don’t force reset with the power-button if MacOS freezes. Leave it and check later. It will eventually continue, like nothing happened. It just takes an annoying long long time… (half an hour maybe?)
Another small tip some might find useful in certain situations:
When dealing with a heavy scene or not-yet-optimized content on a Retina/4K/5K monitor, uncheck “Enable High DPI Support” in Editor Preferences.
The Editor-UI will look like HD (only the UI, viewport/game still sharp), but that’s an okay trade-off for another very noticeable FPS boost for the UE4-Editor.
1 Like
Are you still having the freezing issue after adjusting your settings?
I tried letting it sit but it seems I wasn’t patient enough… lol
Never any freezing and no graphic glitches with settings above.
I am using 4.26 for almost 2 months like this. Very smooth on 5K monitor, especially with editor setting “Enable High DPI Support” off.
Just remember to “Cook content for Mac” and “Validate Data” whenever you change platform settings for MacOS in the project settings.
In project settings > Cooker , i enabled the first two options to let is also cook in the background, to speed things up, when needed.
Good luck!
2 Likes
Got it working over this way!
Thanks again for your help 
1 Like
It’s working really well for me, but I can’t wait for native Apple silicon version. Anyone had any luck building the arm version from source?
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So I’m doing something totally dumb, and I shouldn’t expect this to work, however…I’ve made it this far so…here it goes.
I’m running Windows 11 via Parallels on a M1 Mac, which is running the beta of Monterey. So far so good.
I’m attempting to open an existing PC project in 4.26.2, but the Shader Compiler Worker fails to run (shocking, I know).
I’ve actually gotten Unreal to launch and run the editor just fine with the default tutorial projects, so my hangup at this moment seems to be with shaders on the existing project.
Anyone else try anything this dumb yet?
What are some ideas I could try here? Can I use a custom shortcut and tell it to just…not compile shaders? Not launch the Shader Compiler Helper and just let me look at grey objects? Just to see if I can get that far, get into the project and see if I can navigate my way through it and whatnot?
Just wanted to update this thread with my latest findings.
After updating to big sur 11.5.1 and xcode 12.5.1 the graphical glitches that were happening in the default third person template are now gone. It renders the default third person template map and my personal project fine with no issues whatsoever. In addition to this the crashing/freezing that I was encountering every 5-10 minutes seems to have also been resolved! Very good news, I haven’t done a full day of development on it but it seems that you could now safely use a m1 mac for unreal dev.
2 Likes
Still working lovely Absolutely insane how zippy this thing is.
1 Like
I took the plunge and got a M1 Macbook Air and same - works beautifully and zippy. Thanks again to this topic. I find I use UE5 all the time now ( but no nanite yet ?)
Chiming in here as well, have Epic commented on potentially supporting M1 Macs natively at any point? Would the current lawsuit affect plans or chances of that happening?
Want to move away from Unity while the project is still in early stages, and wanted to try UE5 as well. Doesn’t currently support Monterey (beta 7) though, since the XCode version got updated.
Ue4 def will not ever support arm natively and I haven’t heard anything about ue5 supporting arm either. I think the lawsuit is negatively impacting ios support.
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Yeah I was afraid that would be the case, but surely UE5 would get support for it eventually.
The original Rosetta program ran from 2006 to 2011, at which point Lion removed support for the program entirely. We’re almost at release 2 of ARM native MacOS versions, currently.
Strategically timed bump, the M1 Max looks absolutely skitz! The lawsuit probably sours Epic’s desire to support them though…
EDIT: Tim Sweeney just confirmed it’s still in the works https://twitter.com/ajm4k/status/1450161892668936195?s=20
2 Likes
So like most Mac users I’m eyeing up the new MacBooks. What’s the current state of 4.27, is it running relatively hitch free on M1 now? What about 5?
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UE5 works OK ish, getting around 40FPS on the default top down template map for example, with the current MBP + 8GB RAM. New ones should be a lot better I’d imagine. Performs much better with lower resolution percentages.
Quixel Bridge crashes on startup currently.
4.27 is a bit more stable, but around the same performance.
1 Like
I wonder how the new ones will perform. At the compatibility level it should be the same though. No Nanite and no Lumen. There is a new branch in github (5.0) that was created Today. In case someone wants to give it a shot with a M1 and see if there is ARM support.
Hello! Yesterday I tried building UE5 from 5.0 branch on M1 Air, but they have some issues with references i guess, because ‘GenerateProjectFiles.command’ gives me this error:
Setting up Unreal Engine 5 project files…
.
Setting up bundled DotNet SDK
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/Shared/EpicGames.Core/EpicGames.Core.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “JetBrains.Annotations (>= 2021.2.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”. [/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj]
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/Shared/EpicGames.Build/EpicGames.Build.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Data.DataSetExtensions (>= 4.5.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”. [/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj]
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/Shared/EpicGames.Core/EpicGames.Core.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “OpenTracing (>= 0.12.1)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”. [/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj]
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/Shared/EpicGames.Build/EpicGames.Build.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “JetBrains.Annotations (>= 2021.2.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”. [/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj]
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/Shared/EpicGames.Build/EpicGames.Build.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “OpenTracing (>= 0.12.1)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”. [/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj]
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.CSharp (>= 3.7.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “OpenTracing (>= 0.12.1)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Management (>= 4.7.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController (>= 4.7.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Text.Encoding.CodePages (>= 4.7.1)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Reflection.MetadataLoadContext (>= 4.7.2)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Data.DataSetExtensions (>= 4.5.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “JetBrains.Annotations (>= 2021.2.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.CSharp (>= 3.7.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “OpenTracing (>= 0.12.1)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Management (>= 4.7.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController (>= 4.7.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Text.Encoding.CodePages (>= 4.7.1)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Reflection.MetadataLoadContext (>= 4.7.2)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “System.Data.DataSetExtensions (>= 4.5.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “JetBrains.Annotations (>= 2021.2.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.IO (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Reflection (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Resources.ResourceManager (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Runtime (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.unix.System.Runtime.Extensions (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Runtime.Handles (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Runtime.InteropServices (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Text.Encoding (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Threading.Tasks (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Reflection.Primitives (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Globalization (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Collections (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.unix.System.Diagnostics.Debug (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “runtime.any.System.Diagnostics.Tracing (>= 4.3.0)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1/osx-x64”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “Microsoft.NETCore.App.Runtime.osx-x64 (= 3.1.7)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
/Users/kostbllb/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.csproj : error NU1100: Не удалось разрешить “Microsoft.AspNetCore.App.Runtime.osx-x64 (= 3.1.7)” для “.NETCoreApp,Version=v3.1”.
GenerateProjectFiles ERROR: Failed to build UnrealBuildTool
Saving session…
…copying shared history…
…saving history…truncating history files…
…completed.