All tests run on an 8-year-old MacBook Air.

All results from shipping 7 Mac apps as a solo developer. No sponsored opinion.

Intel Mac users still exist. Apple Silicon is the future. A universal binary covers both with one DMG.

Here's the actual process.

Why bother with universal binary

Rosetta 2 exists. Intel users can run Apple Silicon binaries with it. So why compile universal?

Because "this app requires Rosetta" is a friction point at install time. Some users don't have it installed. Some corporate machines block it. Some users just don't know what it is.

A universal binary runs natively on both architectures. No conversation about Rosetta. No support tickets.

The Tauri build command

bash

rustup target add x86_64-apple-darwin

rustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin

npm run tauri build -- --target universal-apple-darwin

That's it. Tauri handles the lipo step that combines both binaries.…