# Tableau on the M1 Macs.

> 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:** 2020-12-12
- **Format:** Video · 8 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Tool strategy, Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, prep)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-on-m1-mac
- **Watch:** https://youtu.be/yHw8ksgF4do

I test whether Tableau will run on my brother's baseline M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM, recorded over a Google Meet screen share. I install it straight from the DMG, run Superstore Sales, and check performance, before arguing that Tableau in the browser is where things are heading.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau installs and runs on an M1 Mac via Rosetta 2, which translates the Intel-based instructions to ARM with no warnings or errors during install.
- Performance felt smooth with no lag, stutters or fan noise, and the M1 MacBook Air barely drained battery over an hour of screen recording and running Tableau.
- Because it runs through Rosetta translation rather than natively, it is not optimised and should never be trusted in a production setup until Tableau officially supports it.
- Tableau is moving to the browser (Prep led the way), which would make the Intel-versus-M1 question irrelevant and bring instant updates, better resource management and no local install.

## Chapters

- 0:00 The M1 Mac and the test setup
- 1:22 Installing Tableau via Rosetta 2
- 2:28 Why the browser is the future
- 4:05 Running and testing Superstore
- 6:50 Conclusion and recommendations

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-on-m1-mac

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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