macOS Installation Guide
Last modified on March 24, 2023
Overview
This guide provides information to install StrongDM on macOS. The primary download package includes the StrongDM Desktop application and a command-line interface (CLI). You can optionally download the CLI independently from the Admin UI.
Download StrongDM
Use the following steps to install the StrongDM Desktop application and CLI on macOS. To bypass the desktop application, you can download the CLI independently.
Open the invitation email you received for your StrongDM account.
Click the link included in the email to set your password.
Log in to StrongDM and go to the Download & Install page in the Admin UI.
Click Download StrongDM for macOS to get the desktop app and CLI. Once the download is successful, the file name appears as SDM-<VERSION_NUMBER>.dmg. When you click to show all download options in the Admin UI, you can install just the StrongDM CLI for your architecture if you prefer.
Optionally, check that the downloaded binary is legitimate and verify the checksum:
$ sha256sum SDM-15.57.0.dmg 9436778e0c922f621e0456b2694e0ad7dd50de8501632ee784b8add38bac5c5a SDM-15.57.0.dmg
The checksum should match the value in the SHA256 Checksum section of the Admin UI.
StrongDM SHA256 Checksums To continue with the installation, double click the downloaded DMG file.
Drag the SDM app to the Applications folder using the provided shortcut. If you do not have admin rights on your computer, you can copy the SDM app to the Applications folder in your home directory or the desktop, where it runs and updates normally without requiring admin privileges.
Do not run SDM directly from the DMG file. This results in degraded functionality.StrongDM Installation Shortcut
Launch StrongDM
Use these steps to launch StrongDM Desktop on macOS. When connected to resources via the desktop app, all resource access gets routed through StrongDM.
To launch StrongDM Desktop, double click the SDM icon in your list of applications.
The sdm icon appears in the menu bar. Click this icon to log in.
Enter the email and password created during the email invitation step when you installed StrongDM Desktop. You may also be redirected to your single sign-on (SSO) provider.
After logging in, a list of resources you have permission to access appears in StrongDM Desktop.
StrongDM Resources Click one of these resources to enable a connection and gain access. A green lightning bolt icon appears next to the connected resource.
You can now connect to the resource on your machine using your preferred tool. When prompted for connection information, you can typically use localhost for the hostname/IP, leave the username and password blank, and specify the port listed next to the resource in StrongDM Desktop. If the connection fails using these defaults, check the Connect to Resources section for more information.
If you click a website resource, it launches in your default browser. To disconnect from any resource, click the named instance in the desktop app and the green connection icon disappears. Any existing connections from your local machine to the resource are immediately disabled.
Set up the StrongDM CLI
To set up the CLI that is included with the StrongDM Desktop application, you can use the following steps.
After installing the SDM application, click the sdm icon in the menu bar. Make sure you are logged in by checking that the SDM application is online and your available resources display.
Open the StrongDM menu and click install ‘sdm’ in PATH.
StrongDM Menu You can also open a terminal and type
sudo ln -s /Applications/SDM.app/Contents/Resources/sdm.darwin /usr/local/bin/sdm
. Either of these options adds the sdm command line application to your PATH. Verify that the CLI is working properly:$ sdm --version sdm version 35.3.0 (99a5d1a71d4eccaf171449e33bc0826132b05165 #503)
If instead you see something like
-bash: sdm: command not found
, it may mean that the path/usr/local/bin/
is not included in your system search path. Edit the shell configuration file your system is using. For macOS, that is sometimes.bash_profile
, but since macOS Catalina, zsh is the default shell. Open the shell configuration file and appendexport PATH=/usr/local/bin/:$PATH
to it. Then run:$ source ~/.zshrc $ sdm --version sdm version 35.3.0 (99a5d1a71d4eccaf171449e33bc0826132b05165 #503)
Download the StrongDM CLI
On macOS, you can bypass the desktop application and download the CLI independently. Use the following steps to install the CLI only.
Open the invitation email you received for your StrongDM account.
Click the link included in the email to set your password.
Log in to StrongDM and go to the Download & Install page in the web application or Admin UI.
Click Download StrongDM for macOS. When you click to show all download options, go to the Download the StrongDM CLI section.
Download the StrongDM CLI for your architecture. The files are download to a zipped folder on your computer. This depends on your architecture, but the folder name appears as sdmcli_<VERSION_NUMBER>_darwin_amd64.zip.
Unzip the file:
unzip sdmcli_<VERSION-NUMBER>_darwin_amd64.zip
Move the unzipped file to your
usr/local/bin/
directory. We suggest this location since it is usually part of the PATH variable, ensuring you can runsdm
commands from any folder in the terminal.To connect to resources with the standalone binary, you must run a listener manually. Use
sdm listen
to run the listener in the background.
If any errors occur or if the installation fails in any way, please contact support@strongdm.com for assistance.