As a Mac user, I usually run Apache NiFi using one of the two approaches:

• by standing up a Docker container;
• by downloading and installing locally on your Mac;

Running a NiFi Container

You can install Docker on Mac via Homebrew:

brew install docker

Alternatively it is possible to download the Docker Community Edition (CE): an easy to install desktop app for building, packaging and testing dockerised apps, which includes tools such as Docker command line, Docker compose and Docker Notary

After installing Docker, this will let you pull the NiFi image:

docker pull apache/nifi:1.5.0

Next, we can start the image and watch it run:

docker run -p 8080:8080 apache/nifi:1.2.0

Downloading and Installing NiFi locally

Installing Apache NiFi on Mac is quite straightforward, as follows:

brew install nifi

This assumes that you have Homebrew installed. If that is not the case, this is the command you will need:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Here is where NiFi has been installed:

/usr/local/Cellar/nifi/your-version-of-nifi

Some basic operations can be done with these commands:

bin/nifi.sh run, it runs in the foreground,

bin/nifi.sh start, it runs in the background

bin/nifi.sh status, it checks the status

bin/nifi.sh stop, it stops NiFi

Next step, whatever approach you took at the beginning, is to verify that your NiFi installation/dockerised version is running. This is as simple as visiting the following URL:

localhost:8080/nifi

Happy Nif-ing 🙂