macOS

Introduction

No one on the dev team owns a Mac. These instructions are suggested by our users. If you think you can improve them, please submit a PR.

  1. Download Kavita for macOS. The file you want is "kavita-osx-x64.tar.gz".

  2. Unpack Kavita to your User Folder or folder of choice. For example, in Terminal:

    • cd ~
    • mv ~/Downloads/kavita-osx-x64.tar.gz ~
    • tar -xf kavita-osx-x64.tar.gz

  3. Make Kavita executable.

    • sudo chmod +x ~/Kavita/Kavita

  4. Disable Gatekeeper for Kavita's folder so that Kavita and all .dll and .dylib files can be opened

    • xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Kavita/

  5. Help Kavita find sqlite

    • export alias sqlite=sqlite3

  6. Start Kavita in Terminal. You need to launch Kavita from within the ~/Kavita folder, or else appsettings.json will fail to be acquired.

    • cd ~/Kavita
    • ./Kavita

  7. Open a browser window, at address: http://localhost:5000/

Troubleshooting

If you see an error like the following, there are two options: Unhandled exception. System.IO.IOException: Failed to bind to address http://[::]:5000: address already in use.

  1. Turn off Sharing to the Airplay Receiver

    • MacOS Monterey: System Preferences › Sharing and uncheck AirPlay Receiver
    • MacOS Ventura: System Settings › General › AirDrop & Handoff and uncheck AirPlay Receiver

  2. Change the port by editing the file config/appsettings.json and changing the port, e.g. "Port": 5555. Then you can access Kavita with the new port e.g. http://localhost:5555/