A modern X11 server for macOS, built in 30 days by a seasoned programmer and Agentic AI

Download

Download macXserver for macOS — signed, notarized, ready to run.

MacXServer for macOS No release yet — first build pending

System requirements: macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later. Universal binary — runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel.

Install

  1. Click the download button above.
  2. macOS unzips the download automatically. (If it didn’t, double-click the .zip in your Downloads folder.)
  3. Drag MacXServer.app to your Applications folder.
  4. Open it from Applications. First launch is clean — the build is signed and Apple-notarized so you shouldn’t see a Gatekeeper warning.

That’s it. No installer, no helper daemons, no kernel extensions.

Once it’s running

  • The app puts an icon in the menu bar. Click it to see the server’s status (running / port / connected clients) and open the preferences.
  • Default listen port is 6000 (X display :0). Point an X client at this Mac’s hostname or IP and its windows show up as native NSWindows.
  • For Sun workstations specifically, see the setup guide on the GitHub wiki .

Older versions

All historical releases are on GitHub: github.com/toddvernon/MacXServer/releases .

Tags follow MacXServer-vX.Y.Z.

Source

github.com/toddvernon/MacXServer — the whole server (and the companion macXcapture app) is open source. Build from source with Xcode or swift build -c release.