01

Check the chip before picking a dmg

Click the Apple logo in the top left corner and open About This Mac. The first line names the chip. Anything starting with Apple M takes the aarch64 file, and anything reading Intel Core takes the x64 file.

Getting this wrong plays out two ways. An Intel build on Apple Silicon starts under Rosetta and runs, but the core forwards traffic through a translation layer and burns CPU for nothing. An aarch64 build on an Intel Mac refuses to open. Downloading again beats diagnosing either one.

Do not run the app from inside the mounted image
An open dmg is a read only volume. Launching from there works, but you remount it after every restart and automatic updates fail.

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02

Copy it into Applications, then clear the gate

  1. 1

    Mount and copy

    Double click the dmg. The window normally shows the app icon next to a shortcut pointing at Applications, so drag one onto the other. When the copy finishes, eject the image from the Finder sidebar and delete the dmg.

  2. 2

    Two different blocks, two different fixes

    If the first launch says the app cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified, open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, and scroll down until an Open Anyway button appears. If the message instead claims the app is damaged, the download picked up the quarantine attribute. In Terminal run xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine followed by the path to the app, then open it again.

  3. 3

    One administrator prompt

    Turning on TUN or installing the service asks for an administrator password. That installs a helper tool allowed to create a virtual adapter and change routing. The password never reaches a node and never leaves the machine. Skip it and you keep the system proxy with fewer features.

03

The icon lives in the menu bar, not the Dock

Clash Verge keeps no permanent Dock icon. Your control point is the small icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen, and once that bar fills up macOS hides the icons furthest left. Not seeing it does not mean the app failed to start.

  • The icon is findable in the menu bar, and if not, confirm the app really got copied into Applications
  • The Logs page is producing output, which means the Mihomo core process is genuinely up
  • The mixed port is free, meaning 7897 on current builds or possibly 7890 in a config brought from an older install
04

Common questions

I installed the wrong architecture. How do I recover?

Drag the copy in Applications to the trash, download the correct file and install again. The configuration folder lives outside the app bundle, so nothing you subscribed to is lost. To check which architecture is running now, open Activity Monitor and add the Kind column: Apple means native, Intel means Rosetta.

Do I have to allow it again after every system update?

Minor updates usually leave it alone. After a major version upgrade the helper can stop working, which shows up as TUN refusing to start or a message that the service is not running. Remove the service in settings, install it again and enter the password once more. The Gatekeeper step only happens on first launch.