Nix modules for darwin, /etc/nixos/configuration.nix for macOS.

This project aims to bring the convenience of a declarative system approach to macOS. nix-darwin is built up around Nixpkgs, quite similar to NixOS.

The only prerequisite is a Nix implementation, both Nix and Lix are supported.

As the official Nix installer does not include an automated uninstaller, and manual uninstallation on macOS is a complex process, we recommend using one of the following installers instead:

• The Nix installer from Determinate Systems is only recommended for use with flake-based setups. Make sure you use it without the --determinate flag. The --determinate flag installs the Determinate Nix distribution which does not work out of the box with nix-darwin.

• The Lix installer supports both flake-based and channel-based setups.

Despite being an experimental feature in Nix currently, nix-darwin recommends that beginners use flakes to manage their nix-darwin configurations.

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix-darwin
cd ~/.config/nix-darwin
nix flake init -t nix-darwin
sed -i '' "s/simple/$(scutil --get LocalHostName)/" flake.nix

{
  description = "John's darwin system";

  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixpkgs-24.05-darwin";
    nix-darwin.url = "github:LnL7/nix-darwin";
    nix-darwin.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
  };

  outputs = inputs@{ self, nix-darwin, nixpkgs }: {
    darwinConfigurations."Johns-MacBook" = nix-darwin.lib.darwinSystem {
      modules = [ ./configuration.nix ];
    };
  };
}

nix run nix-darwin -- switch --flake ~/.config/nix-darwin

darwin-rebuild switch --flake ~/.config/nix-darwin

# in flake.nix
nix-darwin.lib.darwinSystem {
  modules = [ ./configuration.nix ];
  specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
}

# in configuration.nix
{ pkgs, lib, inputs }:
# inputs.self, inputs.nix-darwin, and inputs.nixpkgs can be accessed here

nix-channel --add https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/archive/master.tar.gz darwin
nix-channel --update

nix-build https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/archive/master.tar.gz -A darwin-rebuild
./result/bin/darwin-rebuild switch -I darwin-config=$HOME/.config/nix-darwin/configuration.nix

darwin-rebuild switch

nix-channel --update darwin

darwin-help will open up a local copy of the reference documentation, it can also be found online here.

The documentation is also available as manpages by running man 5 configuration.nix.

To run the latest version of the uninstaller, you can run the following command:

nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" run nix-darwin#darwin-uninstaller

If that command doesn't work for you, you can try the locally installed uninstaller:

darwin-uninstaller

There are basic tests that run sanity checks for some of the modules, you can run them like this:

# run all tests
nix-build release.nix -A tests
# or just a subset
nix-build release.nix -A tests.environment-path

Let's make Nix on macOS awesome!

Don't hesitate to contribute modules or open an issue.

To build your configuration with local changes you can run this. This flag can also be used to override darwin-config or nixpkgs, for more information on the -I flag look at the nix-build manpage.

darwin-rebuild switch -I darwin=.

If you're adding a module, please add yourself to meta.maintainers, for example

  meta.maintainers = [
    lib.maintainers.alice or "alice"
  ];

  options.services.alicebot = # ...

The or operator takes care of graceful degradation when lib from Nixpkgs goes out of sync.

Also feel free to contact me if you have questions,

• Matrix - @daiderd:matrix.org, you can find me in #macos:nixos.org
• @LnL7 on twitter