--- title: Fully automated Nix installation for macOS on AWS EC2 description: Determinate Systems has resolved a long-standing blocker for running Nix on macOS AWS EC2 instances. Previously, users had to manually approve 'Full Disk... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/fully-automated-nix-installation-for-macos-on-aws-ec2-eertiedgn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Fully automated Nix installation for macOS on AWS EC2 | daily.dev og:description: Determinate Systems has resolved a long-standing blocker for running Nix on macOS AWS EC2 instances. Previously, users had to manually approve 'Full Disk... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/fully-automated-nix-installation-for-macos-on-aws-ec2-eertiedgn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/eERTIEdgN.png og:image:alt: Fully automated Nix installation for macOS on AWS EC2 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Fully automated Nix installation for macOS on AWS EC2 **[Determinate Systems](https://daily.dev/sources/determinate-systems)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Determinate Systems has resolved a long-standing blocker for running Nix on macOS AWS EC2 instances. Previously, users had to manually approve 'Full Disk Access' via VNC graphical login, preventing automation. A new `--use-ec2-instance-store` flag in the Determinate Nix Installer bypasses this by installing Nix to the instance's ephemeral store rather than an EBS-backed volume, which macOS treated as removable. This enables fully unattended Nix installation and supports autoscaling macOS CI infrastructure. The trade-off is that the Nix Store is erased on instance stop and not captured by EBS snapshots, making it suitable only for ephemeral or autoscaled instances, not long-running or snapshotted ones. The feature requires Determinate Nix due to runtime orchestration by `determinate-nixd`. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd), [#mac](https://daily.dev/tags/mac), [#aws-ec2](https://daily.dev/tags/aws-ec2) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/fully-automated-nix-installation-for-macos-on-aws-ec2-eertiedgn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Fully automated Nix installation for macOS on AWS EC2","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/fully-automated-nix-installation-for-macos-on-aws-ec2-eertiedgn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/fully-automated-nix-installation-for-macos-on-aws-ec2-eertiedgn"},"datePublished":"2026-07-26T07:48:25.213Z","dateModified":"2026-07-26T07:50:55.286Z","description":"Determinate Systems has resolved a long-standing blocker for running Nix on macOS AWS EC2 instances. 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