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Retro AIM Server Quickstart for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon)

This guide explains how to download, configure and run Retro AIM Server on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon).

  1. Download Retro AIM Server

    Grab the latest macOS release from the Releases page for your platform (Intel or Apple Silicon).

    Because the Retro AIM Server binary has not been blessed by Apple, browsers such as Chrome may think it's a "suspicious" file and block the download, in which case you need to explicitly opt in to downloading the untrusted file.

    screenshot of a chrome prompt showing a blocked download

    While the binaries are 100% safe, you can avoid the security concern by building the application yourself. We do not provide signed binaries because of the undue cost and complexity.

    Once downloaded, extract the .zip archive, which contains the application and a configuration file settings.env.

  2. Open Terminal

    Open a terminal and navigate to the extracted directory. This terminal will be used for the remaining steps.

    cd ~/Downloads/retro_aim_server.0.11.0.macos.intel_x86_64/

  3. Remove Quarantine

    macOS will quarantine the Retro AIM Server binary because it has not been blessed by Apple. To remove the quarantine flag from the binary, run following command in the same terminal,

    sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./retro_aim_server

    While the binaries are 100% safe, you can avoid the security concern by building the application yourself. We do not provide signed binaries because of the undue cost and complexity.

  4. Configure Server Address

    Set OSCAR_HOST in settings.env to a hostname that AIM clients can connect to. The default setting is 127.0.0.1, which is enough to connect clients on the same machine.

    In order to connect AIM clients on your LAN (including VMs with bridged networking), you can find the appropriate IP address by running the following command in the terminal:

    osascript -e "IPv4 address of (system info)"

  5. Start the Application

    Run the following command to launch Retro AIM Server:

    ./retro_aim_server

    Retro AIM Server will run in the terminal, ready to accept AIM client connections.

  6. Test

    To do a quick sanity check, start an AIM client, sign in to the server, and send yourself an instant message. Configure the AIM client to connect to the host set in OSCAR_HOST in settings.env. (If you didn't change the config, the address is 127.0.0.1.)

    See the Client Configuration Guide for more detail on setting up the AIM client.

    By default, you can enter any screen name and password at the AIM sign-in screen to auto-create an account.

    Account auto-creation is meant to be a convenience feature for local development. In a production deployment, you should set DISABLE_AUTH=false in settings.env to enforce account authentication. User accounts can be created via the Management API.

  7. Additional Setup

    For optional configuration steps that enhance your Retro AIM Server experience, refer to the Additional Setup Guide.