# Tableau &  Apple silicon M1 support in November 2021

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-11-14
- **Format:** Video · 10 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Tool strategy, Productivity
- **Tools:** Tableau (performance)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-apple-silicon-m1-support-in-november-2021
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrXz8JEy0k

I give a November 2021 update on running Tableau on Apple Silicon M1 Macs under macOS Monterey. I cover what works, what breaks, the Parallels workaround for connecting to databases, and my hardware recommendations if you're planning to buy a new Mac for analytics work.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau on Apple Silicon runs under Rosetta but is not officially supported, so you will hit unsupported bugs around driver connections and license activation
- A reliable workaround is running an ARM version of Windows 11 in Parallels and installing the Windows build of Tableau, which connected to SQL Server fine in my testing
- License activation behaviour varies by version: 2021.3 worked for me while 2020 and 2021.1 builds had issues
- For analytics on a Mac, prioritise 32GB of RAM as modern operating systems and Parallels consume memory fast, and SSD swap is better avoided
- An M1 Pro with a 1TB drive is plenty for analytics; the M1 Max is only really worth it for heavy video and GPU work, not Tableau

## Chapters

- 0:00 Why this update on M1 support
- 0:22 My MacBook Pro spec
- 1:20 Default install and driver problems
- 2:08 The Parallels Windows 11 workaround
- 3:13 Activation and version-specific bugs
- 3:45 Nothing is officially supported
- 4:48 Advice if it's your daily driver
- 6:12 Why you need 32GB of RAM
- 8:20 M1 Pro vs M1 Max and storage
- 9:12 Closing thoughts and requests

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-apple-silicon-m1-support-in-november-2021

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena