Installation

Slicer for Mac is available on all Slicer license tiers. We've tested on macOS Sequoia and Tahoe. slicer-mac does not need sudo.

Install the binaries

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

If you have the Invididual tier, then first, install the slicer CLI and activate your license:

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

The activate command will start an OAuth Device Flow via GitHub. Follow the instructions to complete the flow, and you'll get a license key valid for 30 days. The key is written to ~/.slicer/LICENSE along with a GitHub token. The token can be used to refresh the license key without going through Device Flow again.

If you have a higher tier than Individual, you'll have received an email with the license key, copy and paste it into a file at ~/.slicer/LICENSE.

Then use the CLI to install the Mac-specific binaries:

slicer install slicer-mac ~/slicer-mac

During preview, Slicer for Mac does not come with a background service/definition (known as a plist on macOS). So you need to launch it as and when you want it. Either directly in a terminal, or in a tmux window.

tmux is available via brew install tmux, and you can get brew here.

The slicer command acts as an API client to Slicer for Mac.

By default, slicer auto-discovers the local mac socket at ~/slicer-mac/slicer.sock, so you usually don't need any socket flags or environment variables for local use.

Initial configuration.

As a new user, we recommend you do not change the default configuration in any way.

First of all, get used to it, leave it in the path we recommend (~/slicer-mac) and explore the use-cases you have in mind.

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

Only run this if you want to recreate the file because you edited or edited it.

cd ~/slicer-mac
./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 for things like coding agents.

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:

cd ~/slicer-mac
./slicer-mac up

Start the menu bar app (optional)

The menu bar is an optional extension that gives you quick access to VM status, shells, and controls:

cd ~/slicer-mac
./slicer-tray

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 --terminal "ghostty"

Set up the Slicer CLI

Verify it's working:

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

The slicer-1 VM is your main development environment, and is persistent.

You can shell into it with:

slicer vm shell slicer-1

To launch temporary VMs, run the following to launch a new VM into the sbox host group:

slicer vm launch sbox

Then:

# The following will show the two VMs:
slicer vm list

# Access a shell
slicer vm shell sbox-1

# Copy a file in
slicer vm cp ~/file.txt sbox-1:~/

# Use that file, remotely via exec:
slicer vm exec sbox-1 -- stat ~/file.txt

# Delete that VM
slicer vm delete sbox-1

Run slicer-mac as a background service

cd ~/slicer-mac

# Simplest, without tray icon / menu:
./slicer-mac install --no-tray

# With tray icon / menu:
./slicer-mac install

To uninstall:

cd ~/slicer-mac
./slicer-mac uninstall

Next steps

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