Installing TensorFlow on M1 MacBook Air with GPU (Metal)

Installing TensorFlow on M1 MacBook Air with GPU banner

You can now leverage Apple’s tensorflow-metal PluggableDevice in TensorFlow v2.5 for accelerated training on Mac GPUs directly with Metal. Learn more here.

OS Requirements

macOS 12.0+ (latest beta)

Currently Not Supported

Multi-GPU support Acceleration for Intel GPUs V1 TensorFlow Networks

What is tensorflow?
What is miniforge?
What is miniconda?
Uninstalling existing anaconda/conda from macOS
1. Install the Anaconda-Clean package
2. Remove all Anaconda-related files
3. Remove entire anaconda installation directory
Step 1: Install Miniforge
1. Download and install Conda env
2. Create an anaconda environment
3. Activate the environment
Step 2: Install TensorFlow
1. Install TensorFlow dependencies
2. Install base TensorFlow
3. Install tensorflow-metal plugin
4. Install common Data Science packages
References
Related Articles

What is tensorflow?

TensorFlow is open source deep learning framework created by developers at Google and released in 2015. It is actively used at Google both for research and production needs.

Please check references if you would like to read more about TensorFlow and other popular deep learning libraries.

What is miniforge?

Miniforge is the community (conda-forge) driven minimalistic conda installer. Subsequent package installations come thus from conda-forge channel.

What is miniconda?

Miniconda is the Anaconda (company) driven minimalistic conda installer. Subsequent package installations come from the anaconda channels (default or otherwise).

Note: Uninstall Anaconda/Anaconda Navigator and other related previously installed version of conda-based installations. Anaconda and Miniforge cannot co-exist together.

Uninstalling existing anaconda/conda from macOS

Install the Anaconda-Clean package from Anaconda Prompt

conda install anaconda-clean

Remove all Anaconda-related files and directories without being prompted to delete each one

anaconda-clean --yes

Remove entire anaconda installation directory from macOS

which anaconda

After running above command you should see the directory where anaconda is installed.

now recursively remove that folder

rm -rf YOUR-ANACONDA-DIRECTORY

Step 1: Install Miniforge

Install miniforge - https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge

Please note that this tutorial is for arm64 : Apple Silicon

Download and install Conda env

chmod +x ~/Downloads/Miniforge3-MacOSX-arm64.sh
sh ~/Downloads/Miniforge3-MacOSX-arm64.sh
source ~/miniforge3/bin/activate

Create an anaconda environment

conda create -n tf python=3.8

Activate the environment

conda activate tf

Step 2: Install TensorFlow

Install TensorFlow dependencies

conda install -c apple tensorflow-deps

Install base TensorFlow

python -m pip install tensorflow-macos

Install tensorflow-metal plugin

python -m pip install tensorflow-metal

### Install common Data Science packages

pip install tensorflow-datasets pandas jupyterlab