Intent to Ship: Dropping support for macOS Intel (x86_64-darwin) hosts #224
Description
Beginning November 10, 2025, Determinate Systems will no longer ship Determinate Nix Installer and Determinate Nix for macOS on Intel. This means that users of Determinate Nix Installer or Determinate Nix using older macOS hardware will no longer receive updates or pre-built binaries for their hosts. This includes CI targets like GitHub Actions.
Determinate Nix will continue to support building for Intel macOS targets, but only from an Apple Silicon host.
Over the past year, we’ve watched usage of Determinate on Intel macOS hosts dwindle to a minuscule fraction of total usage. It currently stands at approximately 0.02% of all installations. The vast majority are run in managed CI environments that, we anticipate, will be able to easily convert to using Apple Silicon runners.
Meanwhile, including x86_64-darwin in our build infrastructure matrix incurs significant costs in validation and release time. Dropping support relieves a real burden and helps us to ship a faster and better product.
If this plan is disruptive to your resource planning or business continuity, please contact hello@determinate.systems and we can discuss options or reconsider.