Un-installable state of Sunshine on modern macOS (Apple Silicon / Sequoia) and fundamental issues.

[sukuzai]

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Hello Sunshine Development Team,

This is a detailed summary of an exhaustive, multi-hour troubleshooting process attempting to install Sunshine on a modern Apple Silicon Mac. I hope this detailed feedback is useful for understanding the current user experience on macOS.

System Details:

Machine: Mac mini (Apple Silicon)

Operating System: macOS Sequoia

Goal: To run Sunshine as a host for streaming to controller-based Moonlight clients (like Android/iOS devices with a gamepad).

Summary of Installation Attempts and Findings:

We systematically tried every conceivable method to install Sunshine, and every single one failed for a different, fundamental reason.

Homebrew Installation (brew install sunshine):

Result: The installation fails during the compilation stage with the error make: *** [all] Error 2.

Conclusion: The official, recommended installation method appears to be broken for modern macOS versions, as documented by other users as well.

Latest Releases (v2025.x - both "Latest" and "Pre-release"):

File: The only potential macOS asset is sunshine.pkg.tar.zst.

Result: This archive does not contain a macOS installer (.pkg or .app). Instead, it contains a raw filesystem dump of a usr directory. Attempting a manual installation via sudo cp -R usr / fails with Operation not permitted errors.

Conclusion: This is not a real macOS package. It seems to be a raw archive of a Linux/Unix-style installation, which is fundamentally incompatible with macOS System Integrity Protection (SIP).

Older Release with .dmg (v0.22.0):

File: We found an older release with a promising sunshine.dmg file.

Result: Incredibly, this .dmg also did not contain a standard .app bundle. It contained the same usr folder for manual installation as the newer releases, leading to the same SIP-related dead end.

Older Release with .pkg (v0.19.0):

File: This was the most promising attempt, using the standalone sunshine.pkg file.

Result 1: The macOS installer ran and completed with an "Installation Successful" message.

Result 2: We discovered the package ID was org.macports.Sunshine and it installed the executable to /opt/local/bin/sunshine, a non-standard path for systems without MacPorts installed.

Result 3 (The Final Failure): When run from the full path (/opt/local/bin/sunshine), the application immediately aborts with the error: dyld[...]: Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libopus.0.dylib.

Conclusion: The .pkg installer is critically flawed and incomplete. It installs the main program but fails to install its own required dependencies.

The Ultimate Showstopper (from our research):

Even if we had succeeded with the installation, we learned that Sunshine on macOS currently has no support for virtual gamepads. This makes streaming to any controller-based Moonlight client not functional, as there is no way to translate controller inputs to the host OS.

Our Questions to the Team:

Given this experience, we would be very grateful for some clarity on the future of Sunshine for macOS:

Is the team aware of the completely broken state of the installation packages (Homebrew, .pkg, .dmg) for macOS users on recent OS versions?

Are there any plans in the future to provide a standard, self-contained .dmg with a proper .app bundle that installs into /Applications and doesn't require manual file copying or disabling security features?

What is the current status or roadmap for implementing virtual gamepad support on macOS via DriverKit? Is this a priority for the project?

Thank you for all your hard work on this project. As you can see, there is a lot of interest from the macOS community, and we are eagerly awaiting a stable, functional version.

[ReenigneArcher]

File: The only potential macOS asset is sunshine.pkg.tar.zst.

That's an Arch Linux package

You will need to use the beta homebrew package until the next stable release: https://docs.lizardbyte.dev/projects/sunshine/latest/md_docs_2getting__started.html#homebrew-1

For your other questions, you can see the public roadmap:

• roadmap
• Sunshine: Create macOS dmg package roadmap#18

[sukuzai]

Thank you so much for your quick and accurate reply! You pointed me in exactly the right direction.

[javibell89]

Confirming this is still an issue on macOS Sequoia 15.5 with an M1 chip.

I have tried building, and also tried installing via Homebrew using both the 'sunshine' and 'sunshine-beta' formulas.

All methods fail during the build process. The manual builds fail with 'boost::process::v1' not found errors, and the Homebrew 'sunshine-beta' formula fails during the cmake configuration step without a clear error message, but the logs show it is incomplete.

It seems the build system is not yet compatible with the Sequoia environment. I'm subscribed to this issue and happy to provide full logs or test any fixes. Thanks!

[ReenigneArcher]

Please provide the make log

[mthiel]

If it helps, I am getting similar build errors when attempting to install view Homebrew on either of my two Macs.

Log from the Mac Studio on 15.5: https://pastebin.com/GGM4BHS6
Log from the Mac Mini on 15.5: https://pastebin.com/DKGmwQMu

[ReenigneArcher]

You have two different problems. The first one is you have an architecture mismatch. I don't know how to fix that though. I think people have solved it before if you can search around (including issues on the Sunshine repo).

ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture arm64

The second one not enough logs are provided. Please read the logs and it will tell you where to get the full logs.