From the Processing4 Readme “Roadmap”:
- The current release runs well on Apple Silicon using Rosetta. We are currently unable to move to a fully native version for Apple Silicon because of other libraries that we rely upon (JavaFX, JOGL, etc). Once those are ready, we’ll need to do additional work to add Apple Silicon as a target (the same way we support both 64-bit and 32-bit, or ARM instead of Intel.) If there are updates on this issue, you’ll find them here.
…and from the linked issue discussion back in 2020:
The major obstacles preventing us from doing an Apple Silicon release are primarily the other library/platform components we rely upon. In particular:
- Java VM – The Zulu builds should work fine.
- JOGL – Not clear if/when there will be an Apple Silicon version of JOGL. It also doesn’t make sense to ship a version with OpenGL ripped out: Rosetta emulation is working fine (well?) and what would be the point? Bad experience for users, and a support nightmare for me.
- JavaFX – There are Early Access builds of version 17 that include
aarch64(64-bit ARM) for macOS, as well, but we shouldn’t ship EA builds in a final product.- JNA – It looks like support has been added, though there are some indications that it’s incomplete. Haven’t had a chance to test further.
Those are all the pieces that come to mind at the moment. Once those are set, it will be necessary to do some additional work to add another “architecture” for macOS. But the major hurdles for this work were done when Gottfried and I added Raspberry Pi support. It was/is a similar situation: Linux was primarily 32- or 64-bit Intel, then 32- and 64-bit ARM had to be added as well. (Though we’ll only be using 64-bit Intel and 64-bit ARM on macOS.) Apple Silicon Support · Issue #128 · benfry/processing4 · GitHub
As JOGL seems like the major roadblock, a related thread on JOGL on Apple Silicon: jogl - JOGL for Mac ARM Silicon