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As somebody who has been utilizing macOS since 2001 and Amazon EC2 Mac situations since their launch 4 years in the past, I’ve helped quite a few clients scale their steady integration and supply (CI/CD) pipelines on AWS. Immediately, I’m excited to share that Amazon EC2 M4 and M4 Professional Mac situations are actually typically accessible.
Improvement groups constructing functions for Apple platforms want highly effective computing assets to deal with advanced construct processes and run a number of iOS simulators concurrently. As improvement initiatives develop bigger and extra refined, groups require elevated efficiency and reminiscence capability to keep up speedy improvement cycles.
Apple M4 Mac mini on the core
EC2 M4 Mac situations (generally known as mac-m4.steel within the API) are constructed on Apple M4 Mac mini computer systems and are constructed on the AWS Nitro System. They function Apple silicon M4 chips with 10-core CPU (4 efficiency and 6 effectivity cores), 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 24 GB unified reminiscence, delivering enhanced efficiency for iOS and macOS software construct workloads. When constructing and testing functions, M4 Mac situations ship as much as 20 p.c higher software construct efficiency in comparison with EC2 M2 Mac situations.
EC2 M4 Professional Mac (mac-m4pro.steel within the API) situations are powered by Apple silicon M4 Professional chips with 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 48 GB unified reminiscence. These situations supply as much as 15 p.c higher software construct efficiency in comparison with EC2 M2 Professional Mac situations. The elevated reminiscence and computing energy make it attainable to run extra assessments in parallel utilizing a number of system simulators.
Every M4 and M4 Professional Mac occasion now comes with 2 TB of native storage, offering low-latency storage for improved caching and construct and check efficiency.
Each occasion sorts assist macOS Sonoma model 15.6 and later as Amazon Machine Photos (AMIs). The AWS Nitro System gives as much as 10 Gbps of Amazon Digital Non-public Cloud (Amazon VPC) community bandwidth and eight Gbps of Amazon Elastic Block Retailer (Amazon EBS) storage bandwidth by high-speed Thunderbolt connections.
Amazon EC2 Mac situations combine seamlessly with AWS companies, which suggests you may:
Let me present you the right way to get began
You’ll be able to launch an EC2 M4 or M4 Professional Mac situations by the AWS Administration Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or AWS SDKs.
For this demo, let’s begin an M4 Professional occasion from the console. I first allocate a devoted host to run my situations. On the AWS Administration Console, I navigate to EC2, then Devoted Hosts, and I choose Allocate Devoted Host.
Then, I enter a Title tag and I choose the Occasion household (mac-m4pro) and an Occasion sort (mac-m4pro.steel). I select one Availability Zone and I clear Host upkeep.
Alternatively, I can use the command line interface:
aws ec2 allocate-hosts
--availability-zone-id "usw2-az4"
--auto-placement "off"
--host-recovery "off"
--host-maintenance "off"
--quantity 1
--instance-type "mac-m4pro.steel"After the devoted host is allotted to my account, I choose the host I simply allotted, then I choose the Actions menu and select Launch occasion(s) onto host.
Discover the console offers you, amongst different data, the Newest supported macOS variations for this sort of host. On this case, it’s macOS 15.6.
On the Launch an occasion web page, I enter a Title. I choose a macOS Sequoia Amazon Machine Picture (AMI). I be sure the Structure is 64-bit Arm and the Occasion sort is mac-m4pro.steel.
The remainder of the parameters arn’t particular to Amazon EC2 Mac: the community and storage configuration. When beginning an occasion for improvement use, be sure you choose a quantity with minimal 200 Gb or extra. The default 100 Gb quantity measurement isn’t enough to obtain and set up Xcode.
When prepared, I choose the Launch occasion orange button on the underside of the web page. The occasion will quickly seem as Operating within the console. Nevertheless, it would take as much as quarter-hour to assist you to join over SSH.
Alternatively, I can use this command:
aws ec2 run-instances
--image-id "ami-000420887c24e4ac8" # AMI ID is dependent upon the area !
--instance-type "mac-m4pro.steel"
--key-name "my-ssh-key-name"
--network-interfaces '{"AssociatePublicIpAddress":true,"DeviceIndex":0,"Teams":["sg-0c2f1a3e01b84f3a3"]}' # Safety Group ID is dependent upon your config
--tag-specifications '{"ResourceType":"occasion","Tags":[{"Key":"Name","Value":"My Dev Server"}]}'
--placement '{"HostId":"h-0e984064522b4b60b","Tenancy":"host"}' # Host ID is dependent upon your config
--private-dns-name-options '{"HostnameType":"ip-name","EnableResourceNameDnsARecord":true,"EnableResourceNameDnsAAAARecord":false}'
--count "1" Set up Xcode from the Terminal
After the occasion is reachable, I can join utilizing SSH to it and set up my improvement instruments. I exploit xcodeinstall to obtain and set up Xcode 16.4.
From my laptop computer, I open a session with my Apple developer credentials:
# on my laptop computer, with permissions to entry AWS Secret Supervisor
» xcodeinstall authenticate -s eu-central-1
Retrieving Apple Developer Portal credentials...
Authenticating...
🔐 Two elements authentication is enabled, enter your 2FA code: 067785
✅ Authenticated with MFA.I connect with the EC2 Mac occasion I simply launched. Then, I obtain and set up Xcode:
» ssh [email protected]
Warning: Completely added '44.234.115.119' (ED25519) to the listing of identified hosts.
Final login: Sat Aug 23 13:49:55 2025 from 81.49.207.77
┌───┬──┐ __| __|_ )
│ ╷╭╯╷ │ _| ( /
│ └╮ │ ___|___|___|
│ ╰─┼╯ │ Amazon EC2
└───┴──┘ macOS Sequoia 15.6
ec2-user@ip-172-31-54-74 ~ % brew faucet sebsto/macos
==> Tapping sebsto/macos
Cloning into '/decide/homebrew/Library/Faucets/sebsto/homebrew-macos'...
distant: Enumerating objects: 227, accomplished.
distant: Counting objects: 100% (71/71), accomplished.
distant: Compressing objects: 100% (57/57), accomplished.
distant: Whole 227 (delta 22), reused 63 (delta 14), pack-reused 156 (from 1)
Receiving objects: 100% (227/227), 37.93 KiB | 7.59 MiB/s, accomplished.
Resolving deltas: 100% (72/72), accomplished.
Tapped 1 system (13 information, 61KB).
ec2-user@ip-172-31-54-74 ~ % brew set up xcodeinstall
==> Fetching downloads for: xcodeinstall
==> Fetching sebsto/macos/xcodeinstall
==> Downloading https://github.com/sebsto/xcodeinstall/releases/obtain/v0.12.0/xcodeinstall-0.12.0.arm64_sequoia.bottle.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Customers/ec2-user/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/9f68a7a50ccfdc479c33074716fd654b8528be0ec2430c87bc2b2fa0c36abb2d--xcodeinstall-0.12.0.arm64_sequoia.bottle.tar.gz
==> Putting in xcodeinstall from sebsto/macos
==> Pouring xcodeinstall-0.12.0.arm64_sequoia.bottle.tar.gz
🍺 /decide/homebrew/Cellar/xcodeinstall/0.12.0: 8 information, 55.2MB
==> Operating `brew cleanup xcodeinstall`...
Disable this behaviour by setting `HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP=1`.
Disguise these hints with `HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_HINTS=1` (see `man brew`).
==> No outdated dependents to improve!
ec2-user@ip-172-31-54-74 ~ % xcodeinstall obtain -s eu-central-1 -f -n "Xcode 16.4.xip"
Downloading Xcode 16.4
100% [============================================================] 2895 MB / 180.59 MBs
[ OK ]
✅ Xcode 16.4.xip downloaded
ec2-user@ip-172-31-54-74 ~ % xcodeinstall set up -n "Xcode 16.4.xip"
Putting in...
[1/6] Increasing Xcode xip (this may take some time)
[2/6] Shifting Xcode to /Functions
[3/6] Putting in extra packages... XcodeSystemResources.pkg
[4/6] Putting in extra packages... CoreTypes.pkg
[5/6] Putting in extra packages... MobileDevice.pkg
[6/6] Putting in extra packages... MobileDeviceDevelopment.pkg
[ OK ]
✅ file:///Customers/ec2-user/.xcodeinstall/obtain/Xcodepercent2016.4.xip put in
ec2-user@ip-172-31-54-74 ~ % sudo xcodebuild -license settle for
ec2-user@ip-172-31-54-74 ~ %
Issues to know
Choose an EBS quantity with minimal 200 Gb for improvement functions. The 100 Gb default quantity measurement isn’t enough to put in Xcode. I often choose 500 Gb. If you enhance the EBS quantity measurement after the launch of the occasion, bear in mind to resize the APFS filesystem.
Alternatively, you may select to put in your improvement instruments and framework on the low-latency native 2 Tb SSD drive accessible within the Mac mini. Listen that the content material of that quantity is certain to the occasion lifecycle, not the devoted host. Because of this all the pieces might be deleted from the inner SSD storage while you cease and restart the occasion.
Themac-m4.steel and mac-m4pro.steel situations assist macOS Sequoia 15.6 and later.
You’ll be able to migrate your present EC2 Mac situations when the migrated occasion runs macOS 15 (Sequoia). Create a customized AMI out of your present occasion and begin an M4 or M4 Professional occasion from this AMI.
Lastly, I counsel checking the tutorials I wrote that can assist you to get began with Amazon EC2 Mac:
Pricing and availability
EC2 M4 and M4 Professional Mac situations are at the moment accessible in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon), with extra Areas deliberate for the longer term.
Amazon EC2 Mac situations can be found for buy as Devoted Hosts by the On-Demand and Financial savings Plans pricing fashions. Billing for EC2 Mac situations is per second with a 24-hour minimal allocation interval to adjust to the Apple macOS Software program License Settlement. On the finish of the 24-hour minimal allocation interval, the host may be launched at any time with no additional dedication
As somebody who works carefully with Apple builders, I’m curious to see the way you’ll use these new situations to speed up your improvement cycles. The mix of elevated efficiency, enhanced reminiscence capability, and integration with AWS companies opens new prospects for groups constructing functions for iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS platforms. Past software improvement, Apple silicon’s Neural Engine makes these situations cost-effective candidates for working machine studying (ML) inference workloads. I’ll be discussing this matter intimately at AWS re:Invent 2025, the place I’ll share benchmarks and greatest practices for optimizing ML workloads on EC2 Mac situations.
To study extra about EC2 M4 and M4 Professional Mac situations, go to the Amazon EC2 Mac Situations web page or consult with the EC2 Mac documentation. You can begin utilizing these situations as we speak to modernize your Apple improvement workflows on AWS.