EdgeTX Companion on Mac: 2.12.5 Is Still Intel-Only
EdgeTX Companion 2.12.5 is still an Intel app on Mac. I downloaded the current release on 2026-10-23 and checked it on a Mac mini M4 running macOS 26.4.1 with no Rosetta installed. The main companion executable is x86_64 only, and so are all 59 radio simulator libraries inside the bundle. The Qt frameworks around them are universal, but that doesn't help, because macOS decides by the executable. It wouldn't start here: bad CPU type in executable. On an Apple silicon Mac, Companion runs only through Rosetta, and Apple says Rosetta stays a general-purpose tool only through macOS 27.
I don't own an EdgeTX radio, so nothing here comes from reading or writing a real transmitter. What I did: inspected three Companion builds (2.11.8, 2.12.2, 2.12.5) with lipo, codesign, spctl and syspolicy_check, pulled all 70 entries on the EdgeTX releases page from the GitHub API, and read the 57 issues and pull requests in the EdgeTX repo with "mac", "macOS", "OSX", "Apple silicon", "M1", "M2", "M4" or "damaged" in the title (21 issues, 36 PRs, 2021 to 2026). Owner reports below come from those issues.
What is inside the EdgeTX Companion 2.12.5 Mac download
The release asset is edgetx-cpn-macos-v2.12.5.zip (162 MB). It contains one disk image with a license agreement, and the image holds a 349 MB app named "EdgeTX Companion 2.12". I counted every Mach-O file in the bundle and read its architectures:
The other details from the same check:
- Bundle ID
org.edgetx.companion,LSMinimumSystemVersion12.0, andvtoolshowsminos 12.0,sdk 15.0on the executable. Qt is 6.9.3. - Signature:
Signature=adhoc,TeamIdentifier=not set, no stapled notarization ticket.spctlsaysrejected. codesign --verify --deep --strictpasses, and the seal now lists the SDL libraries.syspolicy_check distributionreports a single warning, "This app is adhoc signed", and no fatal errors.
2.12.2 (June 2026) and 2.11.8 (October 2026) have the same x86_64-only executable. 2.11.8 still uses Qt 5.15.2, which is also x86_64 only, and codesign calls it "not signed at all". All three gave the same bad CPU type when I ran them from the shell.
Why the "universal" fix hasn't reached a release
An EdgeTX contributor found the cause in June. The macOS workflow set CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES as an environment variable but never passed it to CMake, so every build came out with the build machine's own architecture. PR #7514 fixed that and was merged on 2026-07-03, but only into main, which is the future 3.0. On the 2.12 branch, which 2.12.5 was built from, the Mac job still says runs-on: macos-15-intel with no architecture override, and that matches what I found in the files.
An owner opened issue #7617 in August saying Companion "will not run on macOS 27" because it ships only Intel code. A maintainer replied that this is wrong: Intel apps keep working through macOS 27, and the cutoff is macOS 28. That matches Apple's Rosetta documentation, which says Rosetta "will be available through macOS 27" as a general-purpose tool, and after that only "a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles". The issue is still open. So there is about one major macOS release left for an Intel-only Companion.
Running EdgeTX Companion on an Apple silicon Mac today
If you open Companion from Finder on a Mac without Rosetta, macOS offers to install it. From Terminal it's one command:
softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-licenseI didn't install Rosetta on this machine. This Mac runs the business unattended, and I keep it without Rosetta on purpose, so it shows exactly which tools in this hobby still need it. Mission Planner on Mac and DJI Assistant 2 fail the same check, and INAV Configurator on Mac passes it.
Because the app is only ad-hoc signed, a copy downloaded with a browser carries the quarantine flag, and Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Apple's "Safely open apps on your Mac" page describes the normal route: try to open it once, then use Open Anyway in System Settings > Privacy & Security. I didn't test that dialog here. The older trick of clearing the attribute is covered in No such xattr com.apple.quarantine.
The quarantine check is why the signature fix mattered. PR #7640 (merged 2026-08-12) explains that the two codesign steps ran as a pipeline and raced each other, so the seal didn't cover SDL2. A quarantined copy of that development build showed '"EdgeTX Companion 3.0" is damaged and can't be opened'. Builds made on your own Mac never showed it, because there's no quarantine flag on them, so the problem went unnoticed. In 2.12.5 the seal covers SDL and the deep verify passes, so you should get the ordinary Open Anyway prompt, not the "damaged" one.
Which EdgeTX Companion version to download for Mac
The Mac file name changed in 2.12.3, from edgetx-cpn-osx- to edgetx-cpn-macos-. That rename broke more than download links. The in-app updater searched for the old pattern, and PR #7754 says it "can no longer find the macOS release asset". The fix shipped in 2.12.4. A copy of 2.12.2 or earlier has the old pattern compiled in, so (going by that PR) its update check won't find 2.12.3 or later. Download new versions from the releases page by hand.
| Your situation | Version | Why |
|---|---|---|
| macOS 12 or later, current radio | 2.12.5 | Latest 2.12 release (2026-10-17). Needs Rosetta on Apple silicon. |
| macOS 12 on Intel | Not 2.12.3 | #7732: 2.12.3 demanded "macOS 15.0 or later" because of a deployment-target slip. Fixed in 2.12.4. |
| macOS 11 or older | 2.10.5 or earlier | The 2.12.5 release notes say Companion is "only compiled for MacOS 12 and above". |
| STM32 F2 radio | 2.11.x (2.11.8) | The release notes say 2.11 is the last series for F2 radios. |
Old OpenTX .otx files | 2.10.x | Same notes: conversion needs Companion 2.10 or earlier. |
How many people does this affect? Across the 38 stable releases with a Companion build, the Mac zips were downloaded 51,787 times, out of 511,989 Companion downloads in total (10.1%). For 2.12.4, the first release with the fixed updater, it was 1,140 of 10,703.
What the Mac issue reports are about
The 21 Mac-titled user issues fall into a few groups. Three are about the radio's SD card or USB connection rather than Companion itself: #2568 and #2742 (Companion couldn't find the radio's SD card; a fix for a macOS 13 filesystem type change, PR #2564, landed that October), and #6787 ("The disk you attached was not readable by this computer" with a TX15 Max on Sequoia). #4802 is a startup crash on an iMac Pro. A developer traced it to SDL initialising joysticks and suggested unplugging them. The owner had several joystick-class devices attached, including Razer keypads. If an EdgeTX radio is also your sim controller, joystick support on Mac covers how macOS sees it.
Three Mac issues are still open: simulator volume gain does nothing (#7355), the Intel-only build (#7617), and #7660, where the 3.0 development simulator shows a heartbeat timeout on Intel Macs but works on Apple silicon. That last one is the reverse of today's situation, and it's worth watching when 3.0 ships.
Options if you don't want Rosetta
- Flash firmware with EdgeTX Buddy. buddy.edgetx.org runs in the browser, and the manual uses it for firmware and SD card updates. It flashes over WebUSB, which MDN lists as limited availability (Chromium-based browsers, not Safari or Firefox). It does firmware and SD contents, not model editing.
- Build Companion from source. The EdgeTX macOS build guide uses Homebrew's Qt 6 and notes that the result is arm64-only. It builds
main, so you'd get the 3.0 development app, not 2.12. - Wait for 3.0. The universal build fix is in
main. I couldn't check a 3.0 Mac build: the nightly release only has firmware, and the Companion builds are CI artifacts that need a GitHub login.
For the rest of the drone toolchain on Mac, Betaflight on Mac covers the same signing checks for the flight controller side, and drone simulators for Mac lists which sims take a radio over USB.
FAQ
Does EdgeTX Companion run natively on Apple silicon?
No, not as of version 2.12.5 (released 2026-10-17). The Companion executable and its 59 radio simulator libraries are x86_64 only, so the app runs on M-series Macs only through Rosetta 2. The fix that builds a universal app was merged into the main branch in July 2026, which will become EdgeTX 3.0, but it is not in the 2.12 releases.
Will EdgeTX Companion stop working on macOS 27?
Not because of Rosetta. Apple says Rosetta stays available as a general-purpose tool through macOS 27, so the Intel-only Companion 2.12 should still run there. From macOS 28, Rosetta is limited to older games, so an Intel-only Companion would stop working unless a universal or arm64 build is released before then.
Why doesn't Companion on Mac find updates?
The macOS download was renamed from edgetx-cpn-osx to edgetx-cpn-macos in 2.12.3, and the in-app updater kept searching for the old name until 2.12.4 fixed it. Copies of 2.12.2 and earlier still use the old pattern, so download 2.12.4 or later from the EdgeTX GitHub releases page by hand.
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How I checked: on 2026-10-23 I downloaded the macOS Companion zips for 2.11.8, 2.12.2 and 2.12.5 from the EdgeTX GitHub releases, mounted each disk image read-only, and ran lipo -archs on every Mach-O file, plus codesign -dv, codesign --verify --deep --strict, spctl, stapler, syspolicy_check and vtool. The Mac is a Mac mini M4 on macOS 26.4.1 without Rosetta, so I got only as far as the bad CPU type error and never saw the app's window. Download counts come from the GitHub releases API on the same day (70 entries, of which 38 stable releases have a Companion build). The issue set is a title search of EdgeTX/edgetx for the eight terms above: 57 unique results, 21 of them issues. The 2.12 build workflow was read from .github/workflows/macosx_cpn.yml on the 2.12 branch. I have no EdgeTX radio, so USB connection, flashing and Buddy aren't tested here. Statements about them come from the linked issues and the EdgeTX manual.