PlatformIO build issue with Apple Silicon

[ajmarroquin]

TL;DR: Use Rosetta for Building ESP32-S3 on Apple Silicon

I was struggling to get PlatformIO to build the .bin firmware correctly on Apple Silicon — whether using pio run --target upload or multi_flash.py.

After trying:

• Manually installing and pointing to updated toolchains
• Redirecting paths
• Downgrading PlatformIO packages
• Hunting down rare compiler versions

…the real fix was simple: run Terminal using Rosetta.

---

Steps

1. Install Rosetta (if it’s not already installed):

   softwareupdate --install-rosetta

2. Enable Rosetta for Terminal:

   • Open Finder → Applications → Utilities
   • Right-click on Terminal.app → Get Info
   • Check ✅ "Open using Rosetta"

3. Open the Rosetta-enabled Terminal

4. Clone the DeskHog repo:

   git clone https://github.com/PostHog/DeskHog.git
   cd DeskHog

5. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv venv-rosetta
   source venv-rosetta/bin/activate

6. Install PlatformIO CLI:

   pip install platformio

7. Install dependencies for sprite/image conversion (optional but recommended):

   pip install Pillow numpy

8. Build the project:

   pio run

9. Look for successful build output:

   Building .pio/build/adafruit_feather_esp32s3_reversetft/firmware.bin
   esptool v5.0.1
   Creating ESP32S3 image...
   Merged 3 ELF sections.
   Successfully created ESP32S3 image.
   

10. To upload the firmware to your board:

    pio run --target upload

---

If you’re on Apple Silicon and running into compiler or toolchain issues with PlatformIO and ESP32-S3 builds, try Rosetta first before diving into deep debugging.

[daniloc]

Man, this one is so baffling. We've been developing on Apple Silicon exclusively and I JUST rode shotgun on a completely fresh PIO install where this was coming up and this guide sort of helped, but things kept dying at the last mile.

And then the solution was to uninstall PIO, reinstall it, and crucially… quit VSC and relaunch it. Then everything worked fine??

[ajmarroquin]

Heh, I tried it on a fresh machine this AM and had issues at the last part of the build with PIO trying to call esptool. uninstalled and reinstalled a few times and still couldn't shake it loose. 😬 Ran out of time to continue troubleshooting so gave up.

[daniloc]

YES

this was where it was dying for me too, exactly.

Installed homebrew, brew install platformio, uninstalled and reinstalled PlatformIO extension, CLOSED VSC when it finished

then everything built and flashed without incident. wtf/fml/sigh

[ajmarroquin]

Weird... I did exactly what you said but still have it failing on the new machine at the esptool call.

[daniloc]

@ajmarroquin hypothesis: an intervening change to the build tools is causing this

if you update platformio.ini with this version-pinned platform value, do you get any relief?

platform = https://github.com/pioarduino/platform-espressif32/releases/download/54.03.20/platform-espressif32.zip

[ajmarroquin]

I got a successful build after pinning this version! I still haven't been able to get it to run while in VSC but can get it to run successfully when using a rosetta terminal.

[daniloc]

thank you for this update! PlatformIO in VSC may be caching the newer, more troublesome version. Could help to flush the.pio folder.

[timrogers]

These instruction unblocked me on my macOS device with an M1 Max chip.

Before this, in both VS Code and the CLI, the build and upload steps seemed to work - there were no errors - but nothing was sent to the board and I don't think anything actually got compiled:

 *  Executing task: platformio run --target upload --environment adafruit_feather_esp32s3_reversetft 

Warning! `src_filter` configuration option in section [env:adafruit_feather_esp32s3_reversetft] is deprecated and will be removed in the next release! Please use `build_src_filter` instead
Processing adafruit_feather_esp32s3_reversetft (platform: https://github.com/pioarduino/platform-espressif32/releases/download/54.03.20/platform-espressif32.zip; board: adafruit_feather_esp32s3_reversetft; framework: arduino)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Verbose mode can be enabled via `-v, --verbose` option
DEBUG: htmlconvert.py is being loaded!
DEBUG: About to convert HTML
DEBUG: Starting html_to_header conversion
DEBUG: Successfully read html/portal.html
DEBUG: Successfully read html/portal.css
DEBUG: Successfully read html/portal.js
DEBUG: Ensured directory include exists
DEBUG: Successfully generated include/html_portal.h
DEBUG: Final HTML size: 55338 bytes
DEBUG: Generated header size: 61675 bytes

============================================================
WARNING: Sprite conversion skipped - PIL/Pillow not available
============================================================

The png2c.py script requires PIL (Pillow) and numpy to convert sprites.
PlatformIO uses its own Python environment, separate from your system Python.

To install in PlatformIO's Python environment:
  ~/.platformio/penv/bin/pip install Pillow numpy

Or on Windows:
  %USERPROFILE%\.platformio\penv\Scripts\pip install Pillow numpy

Alternatively, you can run the script manually before building:
  python3 png2c.py

Continuing build without sprite conversion...
============================================================

========================== [SUCCESS] Took 0.48 seconds ==========================