Building universal binary on macOS

[pronebird]

Hi,

I know that in the past (v1) tauri could build universal binaries on macOS using tauri build --target universal-apple-darwin.

However it looks like that option was removed in v2, and so that begs the question, what's the alternative these days? Should I compile two .apps and then lipo two My app.app/Contents/MacOS/<binary name> manually?

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

> tauri
> tauri build universal-apple-darwin

    Running beforeBuildCommand `npm run build`

> build
> tsc && vite build

vite v5.2.7 building for production...
✓ 42 modules transformed.
dist/index.html                   0.37 kB │ gzip:  0.25 kB
dist/assets/index-CGgmDsQz.css    1.56 kB │ gzip:  0.67 kB
dist/assets/index-Bjmk0Prw.js   170.45 kB │ gzip: 55.64 kB
✓ built in 869ms
error: unexpected argument 'universal-apple-darwin' found

Also tauri build --help still states that it supports universal builds on macOS:

  -t, --target <TARGET>
          Target triple to build against.

          It must be one of the values outputted by `$rustc --print target-list` or `universal-apple-darwin` for a universal macOS application.

Best,
Andrej

[pronebird]

Actually I realized that npm obscures how parameters are passed into tauri-cli so the right way to pass flags is to use -- delimiter:

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

[PJUllrich]

Just an FYI that before running the build step, you also have add the aarch64-apple-darwin Rust target:

rustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin

If you only add the x86_64-apple-darwin target, for example as described in the GitHub Action workflow example you will receive a build error.

So, the full GitHub Action step for building a universal apple build looks like this:

      - name: Install Rust targets for mac and build Tauri binaries
        if: matrix.os == 'macos-15'
        run: |
          rustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin
          rustup target add x86_64-apple-darwin
          bun install
          bun run tauri build --verbose --target universal-apple-darwin

[FabianLars]

Yeah it depends on your host architecture. Since the GitHub action runs on arm we only mention the x86_64 target there.