DJI Fly on Mac: Listed for M1 in 2021, Pulled in 2022

DJI Fly does not run on a Mac today, and you can't get it from the Mac App Store. It used to be there. I read 50 archived copies of DJI Fly's US App Store page, one per month from April 2020 to October 2026. Apple silicon Macs were listed as supported from March 2021 (version 1.3.0) until July 2022 (version 1.6.9). By the October 2022 capture (version 1.7.8) the Mac line was gone, and it has stayed off in every capture since. On 2026-10-22 I checked the live listing for version 1.21.16. It names iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Vision and Apple Watch. It doesn't name Mac.

That lines up with an owner report from July 2022 on MavicPilots. The poster flew a Mini 2 with a MacBook Air on Monterey and wrote that "the DJI Fly app which used to work (several months ago) on my macbook, repeatedly crashed generating a long report". They had used it on the Mac to look through albums and flight logs. Reinstalling didn't help.

I don't own a DJI drone, and this Mac mini has no Apple Account signed in, so I didn't install any app in this post. Everything below comes from App Store listings, the Wayback Machine, and the owner threads I link.

When DJI Fly was on the Mac App Store

Since November 2020, the Mac App Store has offered iPhone and iPad apps on Apple silicon Macs automatically. The developer can switch that off. Apple's App Store Connect help page says these apps are available "unless you edit your apps' availability", and that the setting is per app and covers every version. So the Mac line on a listing reflects a choice the developer made. Apple doesn't decide it build by build.

Here are the exact strings. The 2022-07-23 capture, version 1.6.9, says Mac Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. The 2022-10-29 capture, version 1.7.8, lists iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with iOS 11.0 or later, then goes straight to Languages. I found no DJI release note or statement about the removal, so I can't tell you why it happened. The window is narrow, though: somewhere between version 1.6.9 (July 6, 2022) and 1.7.8 (October 26, 2022).

To check that my parser could see the Mac line in newer page layouts, I ran it on DJI Mimo's archived pages too. Mimo shows no Mac line through January 2025 and has one in January 2026. That matches its live listing. So the 37 empty DJI Fly captures reflect the listing, not a parser that broke on a redesign.

Which drone apps are on the Mac App Store

DJI didn't pull all its apps from the Mac. I pulled the App Store search API's results for "dji" (44 apps on a rerun), kept every DJI-published app with a current listing plus the most-rated third-party drone apps, and read each one's Compatibility block on 2026-10-22. That gave 24 apps. 15 of them list a Mac with Apple silicon:

Seven of DJI's 13 apps in the sample are on the Mac. The ones that actually fly a current drone, DJI Fly and DJI GO 4, are not. If you want a working app on the Mac, the third-party flight apps aren't a swap for DJI Fly either. Litchi's listing says it is "NOT compatible with the latest DJI drones (Mini 3, Mini 4, Mini 5, Mavic 3 Enterprise, Matrice 4 etc)". Go Fly's list stops at the Air 2S and Mini 2. Being listed also tells you nothing about whether the app can reach your remote over USB on a Mac. Nobody has tested that here.

A DJI flight simulator for Mac

Several of the completions people type are about simulators: "dji fly simulator for mac", "dji flight simulator mac os", "dji virtual flight for mac". The only DJI simulator listed for Mac is the newer DJI Simulator app. Its listing says it currently supports the Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S, Lito and Lito X1 with the RC-N2 or RC-N3 controller, and that "Virtual joystick is not yet supported". So you need the physical remote. It has 56 ratings averaging 2.25 out of 5. DJI Virtual Flight, the FPV goggles trainer, isn't listed for Mac and hasn't been updated since March 2024.

For FPV practice, owners have reported Liftoff and Velocidrone working on an M1 MacBook Air with a DJI FPV remote. That's from a MavicPilots thread on Mac simulators. The catch from the same thread: "it does NOT work with a USB-C to USB-C cable". The fix that worked there was a hub with a USB-A to USB-C cable. Another owner on a MacBook Pro got the remote to charge and show up in macOS, but Liftoff never saw it. The same cable advice appears in Betaflight's issue tracker, which I covered in Betaflight on Mac.

What a Mac can still do for a DJI pilot

• Footage and photos: read the drone's microSD card on the Mac. The Mac mini has no SD slot, and USB readers have their own quirks, which I covered in SD card reader for Mac mini.
• Firmware, calibration and flight-controller logs: that's DJI Assistant 2, not DJI Fly. On Apple silicon it's Intel-only, unsigned, and depends on a USB networking kext that fails to load. Details in DJI Assistant 2 on Mac.
• Flying: use an iPhone, an iPad, or a DJI RC with its own screen. Note that iPads have their own breakage history. In a 2023 MavicPilots thread, an owner's iPad stopped seeing the controller over USB after an iPadOS update.
• Desktop DJI software: DJI's download catalog does list a Mac build of DJI Studio (v1.2.21, 2026-10-13). It's for the Osmo 360 camera, not drones.

This pattern isn't specific to DJI. When I went through 41 thermal camera vendor apps for thermal cameras on Mac, FLIR's apps were missing from the Mac in the same way. Whether a hardware maker's iPhone app runs on Apple silicon comes down to one checkbox in App Store Connect, and the people who would use it can't see that checkbox.

FAQ

Is DJI Fly available for Mac?

No. As of October 22, 2026, DJI Fly's App Store listing covers iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Vision and Apple Watch, but not Mac. It was offered on Apple silicon Macs from March 2021 to mid-2022, then removed by October 2022. There is no desktop version of DJI Fly.

Can I use DJI Fly on a MacBook with an M1, M2 or M3 chip?

Not from the Mac App Store. The Mac listing was removed in 2022, so Apple silicon Macs can't download it from the store. Use an iPhone, an iPad or a DJI RC remote with a built-in screen to fly. On the Mac, DJI Assistant 2 handles firmware and logs, with significant limits on Apple silicon.

Is there a DJI flight simulator for Mac?

The DJI Simulator app is listed for Apple silicon Macs running macOS 11 or later. It supports the Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S, Lito and Lito X1 with an RC-N2 or RC-N3 remote and has no on-screen joystick. DJI Virtual Flight, the FPV trainer, is not offered on Mac.

How this was checked: on 2026-10-22, from a Mac mini (M4, macOS 26.4.1) with no Apple Account, so no app was installed or launched. Listings were fetched from apps.apple.com/us with a Safari user agent. The Mac line was read from each page's Compatibility block. The Mac availability JSON flag was ignored because its first match on the page belongs to a related app. Prices, ratings and descriptions come from the iTunes Lookup API. The history comes from 50 monthly Wayback captures of DJI Fly's listing, checked against seven DJI Mimo captures. The 24-app sample is DJI's current apps plus the most-rated third-party drone apps from the App Store search for "dji", not every drone app on the store. I have no DJI aircraft or remote, so whether any Mac-listed app connects to a controller over USB is untested. I found no public reason for the 2022 removal.