We’ve seen some valuable app and game databases recently keeping track of all the software out there that’s optimized for Apple Silicon. Now a free open source app – from developer DigiDNA who makes iMazing – means it’s super easy to check all the apps on your Mac locally for M1 app compatibility.
As we shared before, official Apple Silicon support for apps offers finely tuned efficiency and really impressive performance, but even non-supported apps running through Rosetta 2 translation run really well (which happens automatically after macOS Big Sur prompts you to download Rosetta 2 for the first time). Rosetta translation is so good that M1 Macs can even run x86 instructions faster than Intel Macs in many cases.
But it’s still important and exciting to see official M1 compatibility arrive, particularly for your most important or critical apps.
- Apple Silicon app database lists all the apps compatible with M1 Macs so far
- Here are all of the games found to be compatible with M1 Macs so far
How to check M1 app compatibility for all of your Mac software
We’ve seen the above resources launch and they’re really useful. But if you want to check your own apps in a more seamless way, iMazing has made a free open source app to check for Apple Silicon M1 Mac compatibility called “Silicon.” While you can check individual apps for M1 support with the “Get Info” option, that’s a clunky way to check multiple apps (or all your apps). Silicon solves that.
You can find the free download for Silicon on iMazing’s website here (4th app down). And you can check out the source code for the app (and also download it) on GitHub here.
Silicon lets you drag and drop individual apps to check for compatibility as well as checking your entire Applications folder at once. You can see Universal or Intel compatibility in the About This Mac > System Report > Software > Applications section. But Silicon offers a more polished UI for sure.
Swiss developer DigiDNA makes iMazing which is a much more powerful iPhone, iPad, iPod manager than what’s available from Apple in Finder/iTunes. And makes a variety of other useful apps too, you can check out all of the free software from them here.
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