GDAL

GDAL is a framework library, not a standalone application, so it must be updated through the package manager or installer that provides it rather than as a separate download. The good news is that GDAL has shipped native Apple Silicon (arm64) builds for several years — the Homebrew formula carries a native arm64 build, and several package managers including MacPorts support native compilation. If you installed GDAL via Homebrew, run brew upgrade gdal to pull the latest native version. If you use MacPorts, ensure you have arm64 in your build targets. For R users relying on the sf package, download the optional ARM64 libraries from mac.r-project.org/libs-arm64 and ensure your R installation and GDAL are both compiled for the same architecture. If you compile GDAL from source (from gdal.org or GitHub), the current build system supports native macOS arm64 targets out of the box. The key point: do not rely on an old Intel-compiled GDAL binary if you are on Apple Silicon. Verify your installed GDAL reports arm64 architecture by running file $(which gdal-config) or gdalinfo --version and checking that it references arm64 or native support. Since GDAL is a framework feeding into other applications rather than a user-facing app, keeping it updated also ensures that any GIS applications or Python scripts depending on it will run natively without Rosetta overhead.