macOS installation

Unix console application

  1. If it is not already installed, get OpenJDK 11 or Oracle Java 11.

  2. Download the latest release from Neo4j Download Center.

    Select the appropriate tar.gz distribution for your platform.

  3. Make sure to download Neo4j from Neo4j Download Center and always check that the SHA hash of the downloaded file is correct:

    1. To find the correct SHA hash, go to Neo4j Download Center and click on SHA-256 which will be located below your downloaded file.

    2. Using the appropriate commands for your platform, display the SHA-256 hash for the file that you downloaded.

    3. Ensure that the two are identical.

  4. Extract the contents of the archive, using tar -xf <filename>. For example, tar -xf neo4j-community-4.4.34-unix.tar.gz.

  5. Place the extracted files in a permanent home on your server. The top level directory is referred to as NEO4J_HOME.

    1. To run Neo4j as a console application, use: <NEO4J_HOME>/bin/neo4j console.

    2. To run Neo4j in a background process, use: <NEO4J_HOME>/bin/neo4j start.

  6. Visit http://localhost:7474 in your web browser.

  7. Connect using the username 'neo4j' with default password 'neo4j'. You’ll then be prompted to change the password.

  8. Stop the server by typing Ctrl-C in the console.

When Neo4j runs in console mode, logs are printed to the terminal.

macOS service

Use the standard macOS system tools to create a service based on the neo4j command.

macOS file descriptor limits

The limit of open file descriptors may have to be increased if a database has many indexes or if there are many connections to the database. The currently configured open file descriptor limitation on your macOS system can be inspected with the launchctl limit maxfiles command. The method for changing the limit may differ depending on the version of macOS. Consult the documentation for your operating system in order to find out the appropriate command.

If you raise the limit above 10240, then you must also add the following setting to your neo4j.conf file:

dbms.jvm.additional=-XX:-MaxFDLimit

Without this setting, the file descriptor limit for the JVM will not be increased beyond 10240. Note, however, that this only applies to macOS. On all other operating systems, you should always leave the MaxFDLimit JVM setting enabled.

Uninstall Neo4j

Here are the steps to uninstall Neo4j on macOS:

  1. (Optional) Create a backup to avoid losing your data.

  2. Stop all Neo4j running services:

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sudo systemctl stop neo4j
sudo systemctl disable neo4j
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  3. Delete NEO4J_HOME and the file /lib/systemd/system/neo4j.service:

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rm /lib/systemd/system/neo4j.service
rm -rf NEO4J_HOME
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