Octave.app
Octave.app is a project to bundle and distribute GNU Octave as a native Mac GUI application. This makes it easy to install and use GNU Octave on Mac.
We are not an official GNU project, or part of GNU Octave. We are a rag-tag band of misfits who’ve written a tool to download and build GNU Octave and its dependencies and bundle them as a Mac app.
Our goal is to make ready-to-use Octave.app installers available to the public.
Download
TL;DR
Click here to get Octave.app 6.2.0, the current release.
Details
All Octave.app releases are available on the Downloads page.
When running Octave.app for the first time, instead of just double-clicking it, you will need to right-click on it and choose “Open”, so you get a dialog asking you if you really want to run it, since it’s from an unidentified developer. This is because the app is not signed. This is something we’re working on.
If you’re feeling adventurous, beta and pre-release versions can be found on the Developer Downloads page.
Requirements
- macOS, version 10.14 Mojave or newer
- (Some older versions of Octave.app support older versions of macOS)
- MacTeX, if you want the help command to work properly for Octave Forge packages.
License
Most of Octave.app’s code is GPL, with the exception of its Homebrew formula files, which are BSD 2-Clause License.
GNU Octave itself is GPL. Its dependencies are available under various FLOSS licenses.
Alternate Installations
Installing with Homebrew Cask
To install Octave.app using Homebrew Cask:
brew tap octave-app/octave-app
brew install --cask octave-app
Installing directly with Homebrew
NOTE: This is not the normal way to install Octave.app! Unless you have a particular reason for doing this, please just download and install the regular Octave.app distribution.
If you want to build and install our Qt-enabled Octave build via Homebrew instead of using the Octave.app distribution, you can do this by setting up Homebrew as normal, and doing the following:
brew tap octave-app/octave-app-bases
brew install octave-octave-app
If you have a previous octave build from the regular Homebrew or dpo/openblas formulae, you need to unlink it first with brew unlink octave.
People, Support, and Source Code
Sebastian Schoeps is the original author and maintainer.
Andrew Janke is the current primary maintainer.
For help with Octave.app, please head to the octave-app GitHub repo and see its issue tracker. Andrew also sometimes hangs out on the #octave channel on Libera IRC.
The full code for all the projects associated with Octave.app is in the octave-app organization on GitHub. The major parts are:
- octave-app, which publishes the Octave.app distribution itself.
- octave-app-bundler, the tool that builds Octave.app from its sources and dependencies.
- homebrew-octave-app, a Homebrew Tap that holds the formulae for building the custom Octave.app-specific versions of its dependencies.
Acknowledgments
Octave.app is powered by Homebrew. 
Octave.app’s M1 build server is provided by MacStadium.
