Installation

Installing CONN (pre-compiled standalone release, Mac)

Step 1. Download the file conn22v2407_maci64.zip from www.nitrc.org/projects/conn and unzip this file 

note: to keep things organized on your machine, you may want to download and unzip this file into a new folder within the Applications folder, for example in /Applications/conn_standalone/

Step 2. Download the MCR installer file MATLAB_Runtime_R2024a_Update_4_maca64.dmg  (Matlab Compiler Runtime R2024a (24.1) Mac release) from www.nitrc.org/projects/conn (also available from https://www.mathworks.com/products/compiler/mcr.html). Unzip this file and run the resulting dmg installer file

note: step 2 may be simply skipped if the appropriate version of MCR (24.1 in this case) is already installed on your target machine. If installing different versions of CONN, please match the MCR version downloaded to the CONN version (e.g. CONN18b is associated with MCR_R2018b)

Step 3. After these steps, to start CONN simply double-click on the conn.app icon 

note: standalone conn may take a notoriously long time to get started -around 10 seconds- after double-clicking on the conn.app icon before displaying the initialization screen; please be patient. In recent macOS versions, the first time that conn.app is launched you will receive a warning regarding unidentified developers, select 'Open anyway' to proceed (if that option does not appear, control-click the conn.app icon from a Finder window and select 'Open' from the shortcut menu)

Troubleshoot security issues on modern Mac computers

If you are unable to launch CONN and obtain error messages like "conn cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified" or "conn is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash" that  does not mean that the file is damaged (thank you Apple very much). In most cases this simply means that macOS Gatekeeper security policies have put CONN in "quarantine" and they are stopping CONN from starting. If this occurs, you can remove the quarantine flag from the application using the following command:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/conn_standalone/conn.app

(replacing if necessary /Applications/conn_standalone/ with the actual location of the downloaded application). This only needs to be done once after installation, and after this you should be able to launch CONN normally.