How to launch a macOS instance on Amazon EC2 (Mac instances)

AWS recently announced that you can now run Mac instances via EC2. The Mac instances are listed under a new instance family called ‘m1’. The two macOS versions listed are Catalina and High Sierra. Big Sur is not yet supported.

How to launch a macOS EC2 instance

AWS Console: Make sure you are in a supported region

Currently macOS on EC2 is only available in these regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), and Asia-Pacific (Singapore). Make sure you’re in one of these regions before you carry on with the next steps.

AWS Console: Allocate a dedicated host

Firstly, because the macOS EC2 instance will be running on actual Mac Minis and not on a virtual machines, you require a dedicated host.

1. Go to the EC2 Console.
2. Under ‘Instances’, click on ‘Dedicated Hosts’.
3. Click on the ‘Allocate Dedicated Hosts’ button (it’s the orange one).
4. For the Dedicated Host settings page, input/select the following:

name — whatever you’d like
instance family — mac1
support multiple instance types — disable this (it is…