Installation

Slicer for Mac is included in the Home Edition and commercial licenses. You'll need macOS Sequoia or later on Apple Silicon.

Install the binaries

You need three binaries: slicer-mac (the daemon), slicer (the CLI client), and slicer-tray (the menu bar app).

Install Arkade, then use it to install from OCI:

curl -sLS https://get.arkade.dev | sudo bash

Change to the destination directory and install all mac assets:

mkdir -p ~/slicer-mac
cd ~/slicer-mac
arkade oci install docker.io/alexellis2/slicer-mac:latest .

You can also install the CLI from the Linux package to match your license:

curl -sLS https://get.slicervm.com | sudo bash
slicer activate

Generate the config

The slicer-mac OCI bundle includes a default slicer-mac.yaml in the folder after install, so you can use that file directly and skip regeneration.

Only run this if you want to recreate the file:

slicer-mac new > slicer-mac.yaml

The generated slicer-mac.yaml has two host groups:

• slicer (count: 1) - your persistent Linux VM, starts with the daemon
• sbox (count: 0) - ephemeral sandboxes, launched on demand

config:
  host_groups:
    - name: slicer
      count: 1
      vcpu: 4
      ram_gb: 8
      storage_size: 15G
      share_home: "~/" # Set to "" to disable sharing
      rosetta: true
      network:
        mode: nat
        gateway: 192.168.64.1/24
    - name: sbox
      count: 0
      vcpu: 2
      ram_gb: 4
      storage_size: 15G
      rosetta: true
      network:
        mode: nat
        gateway: 192.168.64.1/24

  image: "ghcr.io/openfaasltd/slicer-systemd-arm64-avz:latest"
  hypervisor: apple

  api:
    socket: "./slicer.sock"

The share_home field maps your Mac home directory into the VM via VirtioFS. Set it to "" to disable sharing entirely, or to a sub-path like "~/code/" to limit what the VM can see.

Need Rosetta for x86_64 binaries? Follow Enable Rosetta.

Run the daemon. The first run pulls and prepares the VM image automatically.

Start the daemon

Start slicer-mac with the config file:

slicer-mac --config ./slicer-mac.yaml

Start the menu bar app (optional)

The menu bar app gives you quick access to VM status, shells, and controls:

slicer-tray --url ./slicer.sock

The Slicer menu bar showing a running VM with options to open a shell, view logs, or shut down.

By default, shells open in Terminal.app. For Ghostty or another terminal:

slicer-tray --url ./slicer.sock --terminal "ghostty"

Set up the CLI

Rather than passing --url on every command, set the SLICER_URL environment variable:

export SLICER_URL=./slicer.sock

Add that to your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc to make it permanent. Verify it's working:

slicer vm list
HOSTNAME          IP              STATUS     CREATED
--------          --              ------     -------
slicer-1          192.168.64.2    Running    2026-02-10 12:46:14

Next steps

• Linux VM - mount shared folders, forward Docker and K3s
• Sandboxes - spin up ephemeral VMs