You will need brew, but do not install imagemagick from brew, because the portable version that you are about to build will not be created if the brew version is present.
This page (December 2025) describes a method for building on Apple Silicon systems only, based on work by Peter Jacobsen, whose earlier method is described in an earlier 2025 page. That earlier page describes a method that also works under Intel, but does not work in Sequoia or later versions of macOS.
Peter Jacobsen's method is based on a method devised by Ercan Sormuz and available here.
To build imagemagick using Peter Jacobsen's method, download and extract this zip archive to any convenient folder.
Open a terminal, type xattr -c followed by a space (the space is essential); drag the config file into the terminal and press return. Repeat with the build file.
Make the config and build scripts executable with the chmod +x command. (Search the web if you don't know how to do this.
Run this command to install the necessary software for building the app. You may already have some of the items installed, but it will do no harm to run the full command.
brew install cmake jpeg dylibbundler webp openexr little-cms2 pkg-config glib fontconfig ghostscript freetype gettext libzip libraqm libheif jbigkit pango libraw libwmf djvulibre pango librsvg libtiff
Then run these commands in sequence:
./build -l
./build -c
./build -m
./build -b
This will create a macOS app that contains the magick executable. The app that you create will do nothing when you click on it! It exists only as a container for the executable and its required libraries!
Now run the magick executable inside the app from the command line. You can create a symlink to it in /usr/local/bin so that you can use magick without entering a path.
If you delete the build files, or copy the executable to another system, then some features will not work (for example, the -background command). You can fix this by downloading the installer disk image linked below, and running the install script, which copies the necessary support files to a location in your system. You can also accomplish this by hand by running these commands in a terminal (changing the location of the Magick.app if necessary):
SYSCONF_DIR="/usr/local/etc"
sudo mkdir -p $SYSCONF_DIR
cd /Applications/Magick.app/Contents/Resources
sudo cp -R ImageMagick-7 $SYSCONF_DIR
To save you a lot of trouble, here is a .dmg disk image with a notarized Apple Silicon build of the December 2025 version of the app and an installer script that moves it into the Applications folder, creates a symlink in /usr/local/bin and copies the support files to your system as described above.
The app requires macOS Sonoma or later, running on an Apple Silicon Mac.
Edward Mendelson (edward [dot] mendelson [at] columbia [dot] edu)