Installing Canon EOS Utility on macOS Catalina and Monterey (and higher?)

Here you can discuss everything related to taking light micrographs and videos.
Post Reply
Message
Author
Sliding Focus
Posts: 44
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2020 6:26 pm
Location: Ghent, NY, USA

Installing Canon EOS Utility on macOS Catalina and Monterey (and higher?)

#1 Post by Sliding Focus » Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:27 pm

Been meaning to write up this thread for a while, but just getting around to it now...

Several folks have posted in the forum this year asking for advice about choosing camera system for imaging through a trinocular tube, and at least two have ended up with Canon cameras (which, although they were not necessarily following my advice, is also what I personally use and would recommend). Canon offers good software for interfacing between their cameras and a computer, including tethering (i.e. controlling the camera remotely from a computer)—a useful feature indeed for imaging through a microscope! It's called Canon EOS Utility (link), and is free to use (link automatically starts download). However, I personally had difficulty installing that software on my Mac, and others have too. If you have similar problems, here is a workaround for installing EOS Utility (and other Canon software too) that worked for me on macOS Catalina and macOS Monterey (using a Mac with an Intel CPU):
  1. Launch "System Preferences" and navigate to "Users & Groups."
  2. Click on "Click the lock to make changes" and enter your password.
  3. Click on the "+" symbol to add a user account and enter the requested information. When finished, click "Create User." NB: Make sure that the drop-down for "New Account" is set to "Administrator."
  4. Log out of your main account and log in to the new, dummy user account you just created.
  5. Go through the setup process for the new user account (I just skipped everything).
  6. Launch Safari and download EOS Utility off of the Canon website (e.g. using the link above). A ZIP file will be saved to your downloads folder.
  7. Click on the ZIP file to unzip it. A DMG file will be created.
  8. Click on the DMG file. A pop-up will appear with a logo for the installer for EOS Utility.
  9. Click on the logo to launch the EOS Utility Installer. NB: This is the step where installation fails in my main user account—the installer fails to launch. It works fine in the new, dummy account, however. I have no idea why that is.
  10. Follow the instructions in the installer to install EOS Utility. NB: You may need to close Safari.
  11. Once the installer notifies you that installation is complete, close it.
  12. Launch EOS Utility to confirm that it works, and give it permission to do whatever it wants/needs to do (unless you prefer not to for some reason). NB: I'm pretty sure that the camera doesn't need to be connected at this step, but if you encounter problems, then try closing EOS Utility, connecting the camera to the computer, turning the camera on, relaunching EOS Utility, and going through the process with the camera connected.
  13. Log out of your dummy account and log back in to your regular user account. EOS Utility should now be available in your applications folder.
  14. Again, launch EOS Utility to confirm that it works and give it permission to do what it needs to do. You should now be good to go!
I hope that someone might find this helpful!

Post Reply