NO LONGER SUPPORTED / AVAILABLE
Catilina broke everything. Sorry
Introduction
A while ago I published a bundle that easily allowed anyone to run HDSDR and the RTL2832U on OSX. To my surprise the bundle was quite successful, a demonstration that there weren’t (yet) many available alternatives to use the cheapest (and funniest!) SDR radio in the world on a Mac.
After a few years things have improved a bit and some valid alternatives have surfaced: Gqrx and CubicSDR. Even SDR# has been reported to work under Mono but, believe it or not, neither of them seem to work well on my Mac. Actually they don’t even come close to the level of stability and/or the number of features that can be enjoyed when using HDSDR.
Last week I installed a new active RX antenna and I tried to reopen HDSDR in order to test it. Guess what? I realized that it wasn’t compatible anymore with the most recent versions of OSX. It was time to do it all over again… so here I am.
How to install
1) Download the zip archive and expand it
2) Copy rtl_sdr and HDSDR anywhere you like on your Mac
3) Make sure your RTL2832U is connected
4) Run rtl_tcp
5) Run HDSDR OSX
6) Click on Start
At this point, if things go as they should, nothing else is required and you should be ready to go. I have successfully tested Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra and they work great.
Updates
January 19th 2016: This bundle now also supports SDRplay. More details here.
February 12th 2017: HDSDR updated to 2.76. Improved rtl_sdr
March 2nd 2017: Fixed problem in rtl_sdr (thanks Walter KC1DVT)
Final Considerations
This is an experiment. I cannot guarantee that it will work nor that it will not damage your system or your data. Download and use the bundle at your own risk.
I am not the author of the software and I can be helpful only up to a certain point. All I am doing is bundling a bunch of different packages in a way that is easily executable on a Mac.