Installation error Apple M4Max Sequoia 15.6

Technical Support
,
1

I have tried the rosetta emulater option with Apple silicon as well as the miniforge + intel install. Both give errors and the installation fails.

I have also tried docker but this is less ideal for remote logins. Any advice on how to run qiime2 on M4Max much appreciated!

CONDA_SUBDIR=osx-64 conda env create \

--name qiime2-amplicon-2026.1 \

--file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qiime2/distributions/refs/heads/dev/2026.1/amplicon/released/qiime2-amplicon-macos-latest-conda.yml

conda activate qiime2-amplicon-2026.1

conda config --env --set subdir osx-64

Channels:

Platform: osx-64

Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done

Solving environment: done

Downloading and Extracting Packages:

Preparing transaction: done

Verifying transaction: done

Executing transaction: done

ERROR conda.core.link:_execute(1033): An error occurred while installing package 'bioconda::bioconductor-genomeinfodbdata-1.2.11-r43hdfd78af_1'.

Rolling back transaction: done

LinkError: post-link script failed for package bioconda::bioconductor-genomeinfodbdata-1.2.11-r43hdfd78af_1

location of failed script: /Users/apollo365/miniforge3/envs/qiime2-amplicon-2026.1/bin/.bioconductor-genomeinfodbdata-post-link.sh

==> script messages <==

==> script output <==

stdout:

stderr:

return code: 1

()

3

Hey @tcolston,

Welcome to the :qiime2: forum :waving_hand:t3:

Can you please run the following command and provide the output in your response?

conda info

We have run into a few issues in this release cycle with folks who are on the latest version of conda, so I want to see if that's the case here.

Cheers :lizard:

7

An off-topic reply has been split into a new topic: qiime2 2026.1 installation error on M-series mac

Please keep replies on-topic in the future.

8

Thanks for the quick response!

conda info

active environment : base

active env location : /Users/apollo365/miniforge3

        shell level : 1

   user config file : /Users/apollo365/.condarc

populated config files : /Users/apollo365/miniforge3/.condarc

      conda version : 26.1.1

conda-build version : not installed

     python version : 3.13.12.final.0

             solver : libmamba (default)

   virtual packages : \__archspec=1=m1

                      \__conda=26.1.1=0

                      \__osx=15.6=0

                      \__unix=0=0

   base environment : /Users/apollo365/miniforge3  (writable)

  conda av data dir : /Users/apollo365/miniforge3/etc/conda

conda av metadata url : None

       channel URLs : https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/osx-arm64

                      https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/noarch

      package cache : /Users/apollo365/miniforge3/pkgs

                      /Users/apollo365/.conda/pkgs

   envs directories : /Users/apollo365/miniforge3/envs

                      /Users/apollo365/.conda/envs

temporary directory : /var/folders/yx/j7mgz85x75x4y0s696m67zzc0000gn/T

           platform : osx-arm64

         user-agent : conda/26.1.1 requests/2.32.5 CPython/3.13.12 Darwin/24.6.0 OSX/15.6 solver/libmamba conda-libmamba-solver/25.11.0 libmambapy/2.5.0

            UID:GID : 501:20

         netrc file : None

       offline mode : False
9

Hey @tcolston,

Thanks for sharing this! It looks like you are on conda version 26.1.1. We are seeing a handful of users experience environment install issues for 2026.1 who are on this version of conda. I'm investigating this, and hope to have it resolved by the 2026.4 release - but in the meantime, the current workaround is to downgrade to a slightly older version of conda.

Please run the following:

conda install -c conda-forge -c bioconda conda=25.11.1

Once you've successfully downgraded to this version of conda, please try creating this environment once more - this should fix the issue, but please let me know if you still run into any problems.

Cheers :lizard:

10

Thank you, this worked!

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