Table Of Contents

• Installation on macOS
  • Installation components
    • Installing Python
      • Homebrew
      • MacPorts
      • Frameworks
    • Source installation Dependencies
  • Using The Kivy.app
    • Using the App Virtual environment
    • Start any Kivy Application

Installation on macOS

To install Kivy on macOS using pip, please follow the main installation guide. Otherwise, continue to the Kivy.app instructions below.

Installation components

Following, are additional information linked to from some of the steps in the main installation guide, specific to macOS.

Installing Python

Homebrew

If you’re using Homebrew, you can install Python with:

brew install python3

MacPorts

If you’re using Macports, you can install Python with:

# Install and set e.g. Python 3.8 as the default
port install python38
port select --set python python38

# Install and set pip as the default::
port install py38-pip
port select --set pip py38-pip

Frameworks

To install frameworks Python on macOS, download it from the main Python website and follow the installation steps. You can read more about the installation in the Python guide.

Source installation Dependencies

To install Kivy from source, please follow the installation guide until you reach the Kivy install step and then install the additional dependencies below before continuing.

pkg-config, cmake, ninja are required to build Kivy from source. If you’re using brew as your package manager, you can install it with:

brew install pkg-config cmake ninja

Now that you have all the dependencies for kivy, you need to make sure you have the command line tools installed:

xcode-select --install

Using The Kivy.app

Note

Kivy.app is built with MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.9.

You can find complete instructions to build and package apps with Kivy.app in the readme of the kivy-sdk-packager repo.

To install the Kivy virtualenv, you must:

1. Navigate to the latest Kivy release on Kivy’s website or GitHub and download Kivy.dmg. You can also download a nightly snapshot of Kivy.app.

2. Open the dmg

3. In the GUI copy the Kivy.app to /Applications by dragging the folder icon to the right.

4. Optionally create a symlink by running the following command:

   ln -s /Applications/Kivy.app/Contents/Resources/script /usr/local/bin/kivy
   

   This creates the kivy binary that you can use instead of python to run scripts. I.e. instead of doing python my_script.py or python -m pip install <module name>, write kivy my_script.py or kivy -m pip install <module name> to run it using the kivy bundled Python interpreter with the kivy environment.

   As opposed to activating the virtualenv below, running with kivy will use the virtualenv but also properly configure the script environment required to run a Kivy app (i.e. setting kivy’s home path etc.).

Using the App Virtual environment

The path to the underlying virtualenv is /Applications/Kivy.app/Contents/Resources/venv. To activate it so you can use python, like any normal virtualenv, do:

pushd /Applications/Kivy.app/Contents/Resources/venv/bin
source activate
source kivy_activate
popd

Warning

On the default mac (zsh) shell you must be in the bin directory containing activate to be able to activate the virtualenv, hence why we changed the directory temporarily.

kivy_activate sets up the environment to be able to run Kivy, by setting the kivy home, and other variables.

Start any Kivy Application

You can run any Kivy application by simply dragging the application’s main file onto the Kivy.app icon.