mac4DSTEM

Support

Last updated 14 August 2026

Questions, bug reports, and feature requests all go to one address. I read everything.

mail@mac4dstem.com

mac4DSTEM is developed by one person alongside other work, so replies are not instant — but every report is looked at. There is no support contract and no charge; the application is free.

Requirements

  • macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
  • Apple silicon — M-series Macs. Intel Macs are not supported.
  • No external runtime, toolchain, Python environment, or library installation. Every dependency ships inside the application bundle.
  • Enough free disk space for your datasets and any exported products. Memory needs scale with scan and detector size.

Reporting a problem

A report is most useful when it lets me reproduce what you saw. Where you can, include:

  • What you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.
  • The application version and your macOS version and Mac model.
  • The dataset's format, scan shape, and detector shape — the sidebar reports all three.
  • The step in the workflow where it went wrong (Prepare, Image, Map, Reconstruct, Results).
  • A screenshot of the window, including any diagnostics shown alongside the result.
  • The relevant lines from the log pane at the bottom of the window.

Please do not send datasets as email attachments. If reproducing an issue needs the data, say so and we can arrange a transfer.

Known limitations

  • The Merlin MIB and EMPAD RAW readers are preview-grade, pending further vendor data. If a file from either detector loads incorrectly, a report with the file's header is particularly valuable.
  • Verification is numerical: the application is tested against known-correct values rather than against its rendered output.
  • Where a measurement is not quantitatively supported, the result is labelled as such in the interface. Those labels are deliberate — treat them as part of the result.

Results and interoperability

Bragg vectors, calibrated datacubes, and preprocessed products export to EMD and can be read directly in py4DSTEM. If you need a result in a format that is not currently offered, that is a reasonable thing to ask for.

Citing the methods

The analysis algorithms are ported from py4DSTEM and validated against it. Work published using mac4DSTEM should cite py4DSTEM for the underlying methods.

Licence

mac4DSTEM is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. It is free software, provided without warranty of any kind.