ESP32 Mac troubleshooting

A collection of links related to troubleshooting ESP32 development on MacOS.

Bypassing gatekeeper on Mac OS

Mac OSX Silabs driver

You need to work around a safety measure called Gatekeeper which is a little different per OS operating system. Follow instructions below for your OS or google “disable gatekeeper on mac [insert your version here, e.g. monterey]” More info here

Mojave (10.14.x)

How to disable GateKeeper

sudo spctl --master-disable

High Sierra (10.13.x)

The allow button in the settings menu might not work, then to disable checking altogether:

Shut down your Mac
Start again while holding mac+ R during boot to enter recovery mode
Open a terminal window
type the following command and press enter

```
spctl kext-consent disable
```
Reboot
Try install driver again

Sierra (10.12.x)

How to disable GateKeeper
```
  sudo spctl --master-disable
```

El capitan (10.11.x)

Yosemite (10.10.x)

Legacy driver must be installed, instead normal one.

After starting the Arduino IDE, make sure it can communicate with the ESP32 module

If communication is possible, you can select /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART (for other than Mac OSX, this name might be different) as shown in the picture below.

screenshot of Arduino window with menu Tools-Port-SLAB_USBtoUART selected
If communication is not possible, SLAB_USBtoUART will not show up (for other than Mac OSX, this name might be different.)

Arduino Esp32 communication failed