macOS
The EdgeFirst Profiler ships a native arm64 binary for macOS 11 and later. macOS is supported for ONNX model development — the vendor accelerator backends (TFLite/Neutron/VSI delegates, Hailo, TensorRT, Ara-2) are Linux-only and either fail to compile or require Linux-only runtime libraries.
The macOS-specific accelerator path is the CoreML execution provider through ONNX Runtime, which offloads supported subgraphs to the Apple Neural Engine or the Metal GPU.
Install
pip install edgefirst-profiler
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EdgeFirstAI/profiler-cli/main/install.sh | bash
The installer drops the binary into ~/.local/bin (default) or /usr/local/bin (run as root). If the install path is not on your PATH, the script prints the exact line to add to your shell profile.
Confirm:
edgefirst-profiler --version
ONNX Runtime — required
ONNX Runtime is the default and only fully-supported backend on macOS. Install it via Homebrew:
brew install onnxruntime
Homebrew installs libonnxruntime.dylib into /opt/homebrew/lib. That path is not on macOS's default dyld search path, but the profiler scans it explicitly — you do not need to set ORT_DYLIB_PATH or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH.
If you maintain a non-Homebrew install, set ORT_DYLIB_PATH to the absolute path of your libonnxruntime.dylib.
CoreML execution provider
Pass --provider coreml to offload supported subgraphs to the Apple Neural Engine or Metal GPU when running a validation session.
The CoreML EP caches compiled subgraphs at ~/Library/Caches/edgefirst-profiler/coreml/. The first run of a given model is slower while compilation happens; subsequent runs are warm.
CoreML coverage is partial — operators not supported by the Apple Neural Engine fall back to CPU within the same graph. Studio's trace view shows exactly which ops ran where.
Verifying the install
edgefirst-profiler login # save Studio credentials
edgefirst-profiler # opens TUI on F1 Help
Then run a validation session — see Validation from Studio or Validation from the Profiler.
What is not supported on macOS
| Backend | Why not |
|---|---|
| TensorFlow Lite | libtensorflowlite_c.so is Linux-only in the EdgeFirst distribution |
| NXP Neutron / VSI delegates | Delegates ship with NXP Linux BSPs only |
| Kinara Ara-2 | ara2-proxy daemon is Linux-only |
| Hailo | HailoRT does not ship a macOS build |
| TensorRT | TensorRT is Jetson / Linux + NVIDIA GPU |
If you need to validate against these backends from a Mac, SSH into the target board and run the profiler there.