Frederik De Bleser, the inventor of Nodebox, has just released Nodebox version 3.1.0 for Apple Silicon based Macs.

If you are running on a PC or an ancient Intel-based Mac, you can ignore this and stay on version 3.0.52.

From the release notes:

Version 3.1.0 (14 June 2026)

• NodeBox is now a native Apple Silicon (arm64) application — it no longer runs through Rosetta and will keep working on macOS releases after Apple removes Rosetta. The bundled Java runtime, ffmpeg, and native libraries are all native arm64.
• Intel Macs: this release is Apple Silicon only. Intel Mac users should stay on v3.0.52.
• macOS and Windows builds are now produced, signed, and notarized reproducibly via GitHub Actions.

I have installed 3.1.0 on my Mac M3 Pro and it seems to run fine - and noticeably faster!

I rendered an animation I was working on today. Under 3.0.52 this took 7:52 minutes. Under 3.1.0 it took 5:06 minutes, an improvement of 55%.

I also timed how long it took to open my vast Cartan Node Library from inside Nodebox: 10.7 seconds under 3.0.52, 4.8 seconds under 3.1.0 - more than twice as fast!

So far the output seems unchanged. I did notice one very minor difference. When rendering my movie under 3.1.0, clicking on the rendering progress dialog caused the current window to switch to the app instead of the render window, which does not happen under 3.0.52. This is a minor window management quirk and had no effect whatsoever on the output or render process. I mention it only because it is an observable difference. If I spot any other differences I will reply to this discussion with an update. But for now I am satisfied that 3.1.0 is safe to use.

Mac users can download it here: https://www.nodebox.net/download/

BACKGROUND

This update secures the long term viability of NodeBox on the Mac. The latest release of the Mac OS, OS 27 Golden Gate, continues to support legacy Rosetta-based apps like NodeBox. But at their dev conference last week, Apple warned that this would be the last OS to do that. So when OS 28 comes out, presumably next year, users upgrading to that OS would find that Nodebox would no longer run.

Nodebox 3.1.0 eliminates that concern. Mac users should be able to use Nodebox under the latest operating systems for many years to come. And the significant speed improvement is a great bonus!

Thanks, Frederik!