How to Install JMeter on a Mac

You have always wanted to use JMeter, on your Mac, but you don’t know how to get started. You might have downloaded JMeter so far, so now how do you get that software installed, up and running? Running a Java program on a Mac isn’t obvious so we are going to explain how to install and run JMeter within minutes using a few command lines.

The great thing is JMeter is a Java program. Java programs are designed to be portable to Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Install HomeBrew

First, we are going to install HomeBrew:

Homebrew is a package manager for MacOS. It enables the user to install / update / remove applications at ease with a nice command line interface.

HomeBrew requires the following configuration:

An Intel CPU,
OS X 10.10 or higher,
Command Line Tools (CLT) for Xcode: xcode-select --install, developer.apple.com/downloads or Xcode,
A Bourne-compatible shell for installation (e.g. bash or zsh).

To install HomeBrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

It should take only a couple of minutes. Before installing JMeter, let’s now update HomeBrew package definitions:

brew update

Make sure to update brew before installing JMeter, otherwise you may run into issues like this one:

==> Downloading http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=jmeter/binaries/ap‌ache-jmeter-2.11.tgz ==> Best Mirror http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/jmeter/binaries/apache-jmet‌er-2.11.tgz curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found Error: Failed to download resource "jmeter" Download failed: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/jmeter/binaries/apache-jmet‌er-2.11.tgz

This issue happens often when a new JMeter version is available, but your local HomeBrew package definition still points to the old version.

Install JMeter

It’s almost finished now, run:

brew install jmeter

If you wish to install jmeter-plugins along with JMeter, add the --with-plugins flag. After a couple of minutes, JMeter should be installed and ready to use.

Update JMeter

Willing to upgrade to JMeter’s latest version? Simply run in a terminal:

brew upgrade jmeter

Launch JMeter

JMeter should be now available as a command-line, try jmeter -? and you should see something like:

macos:~ macos$ jmeter -?
Writing log file to: /Users/macos/jmeter.log
    _    ____   _    ____ _   _ _____       _ __  __ _____ _____ _____ ____     
   / \  |  _ \ / \  / ___| | | | ____|     | |  \/  | ____|_   _| ____|  _ \   
  / _ \ | |_) / _ \| |   | |_| |  _|    _  | | |\/| |  _|   | | |  _| | |_) | 
 / ___ \|  __/ ___ \ |___|  _  | |___  | |_| | |  | | |___  | | | |___|  _ <  
/_/   \_\_| /_/   \_\____|_| |_|_____|  \___/|_|  |_|_____| |_| |_____|_| \_\ 3.3 r1770033

Copyright (c) 1999-2017 The Apache Software Foundation


....

To Launch JMeter, simply run:

macos:~ macos$ jmeter

Configure JMeter

JMeter’s configuration files are located in the following directories:

Item	Standard
Plugins folder	JMETER_HOME/lib/ext/
Library folder for plugin dependencies
Configuration folder	JMETER_HOME/bin/

Item	Homebrew
Plugins folder	CELLAR_HOME/jmeter/3.1/libexec/lib/ext
Library folder for plugin dependencies	CELLAR_HOME/jmeter/3.1/libexec/lib/
Configuration folder	CELLAR_HOME/jmeter/3.1/libexec/bin/