Is Rosetta Safe?

[averyhare]

Hi! I’m a new Mac user and don’t know that much about computers. I wanted to download Spotify, it asked me download Rosetta software and I understand it’s necessary to read through non native apps for Apple. My question is did I make a mistake? Is this safe for my information and my computer? How many people have this downloaded?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Yes, it is safe to download and install on your new M1.

Everything you need to know about Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon Macs

Because it is so tightly integrated with the chip, Rosetta 2 means some apps will run faster on an Apple Silicon Mac than they do on Intel.

www.computerworld.com

 

[duffyanneal]

Rosetta is created and distributed by Apple and is safe.

 

[tonyr6]

Surprised macs with M1 chips running Big Sur don't have Rosetta installed by default.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Surprised macs with M1 chips running Big Sur don't have Rosetta installed by default.

Some users stick with only using stock apps. I think Apple did the right thing leaving it to the user to decide.

 

[mdgm]

Only using apps native to the M1 is going to give the best performance and as more and more apps are compiled to run natively on the M1 it'll be a realistic choice for more and more users.

 

[shenfrey]

Does Rosetta affect Mac performance as a whole?

 

[okkibs]

No, it remains inactive until you launch an app. And then after the first start of an Intel app it stores info on how to run that app on the disk so it doesn't need to run the same calculations over and over again and can just read it from the disk instead, which is more efficient. Many Intel apps actually run faster on the current M2 chips than they ever did on Intel Macs.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Does Rosetta affect Mac performance as a whole?

No. It's just a translation layer and it only runs when an x86 app is running.

 

[bogdanw]

Rosetta creates files in /private/var/db/oah https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...rd-invisible-files-in-private-var-db.2391222/

 

[okkibs]

Yes it does, as I said above it stores info about the translation for each x86_64 app upon first launch and loads that data back upon subsequent launches to reduce the amount of processing needed. This is expected behaviour.