Installing Homebrew

To begin, you'll need Homebrew. If it's not already installed on your system, you can find detailed instructions on how to set it up in the official documentation.

Installing Miniforge

Miniforge serves as a community-centric minimalist Conda installer. Unlike Miniconda, it is built to natively support multiple architectures, including arm64 (M1). Additionally, being community-supported rather than company-backed is a significant advantage.

To install Miniforge, you can use Homebrew with the following command:

brew install miniforge

After installation, configure your terminal to work with Conda environments by executing:

conda init zsh

Be sure to restart your terminal afterward. You should see (base) in your command prompt, indicating that Conda is now active.

Creating a Conda Environment for OpenCV

Next, you’ll want to create a dedicated environment for OpenCV. Use these commands:

conda create -n cv python=3.8.6

conda activate cv

Feel free to modify the Python version if necessary; however, Python 3.8.6 has proven effective for this setup. Remember to activate your environment with conda activate cv each time you open a new terminal session where (base) appears in the prompt.

Installing OpenCV Packages

Now it's time to install OpenCV. Use the following command:

conda install -c conda-forge opencv

It's important to note that we are using Conda instead of pip here. The -c conda-forge flag directs the installer to the community-driven channel, ensuring you access the latest package versions.

Congratulations! You now have a fully functional Python environment ready for OpenCV. I hope this guide proves useful in alleviating the complexities of setting up OpenCV on your Mac. If you found this information helpful, please consider leaving a clap or following for more insights!

In this video, you will learn how to install OpenCV for Python within Visual Studio Code on a Mac, featuring step-by-step guidance.