Get a dedicated physical Mac mini M4—not a VM. Choose a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly term at any of 6 locations. SSH in and set up your familiar toolchain on your own cloud workstation.
Install and configure tools for your project, so your cloud environment stays in sync with your code.
These three use cases cover most reasons to rent a Mac. Start with the task, then decide whether you need a machine kept online long term.
Create archives with xcodebuild archive, and use fastlane to handle code signing and TestFlight uploads. Import your own projects, certificates, and provisioning profiles. Keep certificates in a dedicated keychain, then clean up after builds according to your team’s policies.
Register a GitHub Actions self-hosted runner or GitLab Runner and send jobs to your dedicated physical machine. Set concurrency to suit your needs. Keep dependency caches, DerivedData, and build logs for each project, so you don’t have to set up the environment from scratch every time.
Use MLX, llama.cpp, or Ollama on M4 to test inference workflows with quantized models. The 16 GB of unified memory must accommodate the model, context, and system overhead. Test your chosen quantization to see whether a 7B–8B model will run.
Use the connection address, username, and credentials shown in the console. The image above illustrates how to connect; it does not show a running instance.
No shared workstations. You rent a real Mac mini M4, not a virtual environment carved out of a host machine.
The M4 chip, 16 GB memory, and 256 GB SSD are yours on this physical machine. Choose which builds to run, which caches to keep, and when to start background jobs. You control how resources are allocated across projects.
A good fit for projects that need to keep dependencies, certificates, and build environments on hand.
macOS runs directly on physical hardware. Use system_profiler to check the hardware, then record build times for your own tasks. For a meaningful comparison, use the same project, tool versions, and cache conditions.
A dedicated machine does not mean unlimited concurrency; jobs are still constrained by its resources.
The full macOS graphical interface and command line are available. Install, keep, and switch between compatible Xcode versions as your project requires, then verify the SDK and command-line tool paths. Your Xcode version must be compatible with macOS.
Run xcodebuild -version before your first archive.
One plan: Desk M4. Rent by the day, pay in USD, and get the same price at all 6 locations. Get your task running first, then choose a term that fits how you work.
Mac mini M4 · 16 GB · 256 GB SSD
Choose a day for a quick fix or a week for a sprint. If you regularly use a build machine with cached dependencies, consider a month or quarter. The quarterly rate works out to about $98.5per month, based on 3 months.
Test your project
Short development sprints
Ongoing development and caching
Always-on CI workflows
Add-ons:+1 TB SSD $11.4/month · +2 TB SSD $22.8/month · Thunderbolt 5 linking $6.4/month per machine.
Additional SSDs expand storage, not unified memory. Linking multiple machines does not combine them into shared memory. Check that your software supports distributed workloads before choosing how to connect them.
Four locations in Asia-Pacific and two in North America. Desk M4 is available at every location, all at the same price. Cards show the locations listed for sale; check the console for real-time availability.
An option for teams across Southeast Asia. Test from your developers’ locations and include your code repository and artifact downloads—not just straight-line distance.
Rent a Singapore workstationA location for teams working across East Asia. Test SSH and remote desktop performance over the network you use for everyday development.
Rent a Tokyo workstationAnother option for projects collaborating across Northeast Asia. Test the connection on your regular work network before placing an always-on runner here.
Rent a Seoul workstationA convenient option for development teams working between South China and Southeast Asia. For remote desktop, check round-trip latency; for build pipelines, also check dependency downloads and artifact uploads.
Rent a Hong Kong workstationFor teams in eastern North America and Western Europe. If your CI triggers and artifact repository are in this region, measure transfer time across the full build pipeline.
Rent a US East workstationFor teams on North America’s West Coast. Put build jobs close to your team’s workflow, then choose based on real download, upload, and interaction performance.
Rent a US West workstationLocations run year-round, 365 days a year. Network performance depends on your connection and workload; we don’t make latency claims without testing conditions.
Move your project first, align your tools, then connect your pipeline. The time estimates below are for planning, not provisioning times; download size and network speed affect the actual time required.
Use Git to fetch your code and rsync to transfer any necessary files that aren’t in your repository. Export signing materials separately and transfer them securely. After importing them into the cloud keychain, check access permissions and never commit private keys to your repository.
rsync -avz ~/Projects/ \
dev@203.0.113.24:~/Projects/Replace the example address with the IP assigned in your console. Check the destination path before syncing.
Allow about 15 minutes to prepare your files; transfer time is extra.
Export a Brewfile locally, then transfer it to the cloud installation directory. Check your Xcode, SDK, Ruby, and project dependency versions. Don’t just check whether the app opens—run a command-line build.
brew bundle dump
brew bundle install
xcodebuild -version
xcode-select -pRun the first export command locally; run the installation and check commands in the cloud.
Allow about 30–60 minutes for installation; large downloads may take longer.
Follow your repository’s instructions to register a GitHub Actions or GitLab Runner. Assign labels for the machine and job. Only allow trusted projects to use runners with signing materials, and limit pipeline concurrency.
runs-on:
- self-hosted
- macOS
- ARM64
- desk-m4This is a GitHub Actions workflow snippet. When registering the runner, use matching labels.
Allow about 10 minutes for setup once your credentials and workflow are ready.
“I send the overnight build to the Tokyo machine and pick up the IPA in the morning.”
Independent iOS developer
“Our CI queue went from half an hour to a few minutes because the whole machine runs only our jobs.”
Mobile team lead
“I run quantized models with MLX on M4. A week’s rental is just right for finishing an experiment.”
Graduate researcher in AI
Understand the machine, connection, billing, and data handling before your first payment. Making sure your environment works matters more than the chip model alone.
No. You rent a whole physical Mac mini M4, assigned to one user: you. Desk M4 comes with an M4, 16 GB memory, and a 256 GB SSD. Additional SSDs only expand storage.
Yes. Configure your development tools for your project, and keep or switch between compatible versions. First check the macOS requirements for your target Xcode version, then verify the SDK and command-line tool paths. If your project requires a specific macOS version, confirm the environment requirements with support@macminivps.com before paying.
Use SSH for builds, CI, and inference workloads. Use remote desktop when you need the Xcode graphical interface or Simulator. We recommend connecting to VNC through an SSH tunnel. Don’t store access credentials in your repository or public logs; see the getting started guide for instructions.
After your rental expires, service shutdown and disk erasure are handled according to the terms of service. This includes any additional SSDs. Don’t use a rental machine as your only backup. Before expiry, export your code, artifacts, certificates, and any logs you need, and check your renewal status in the console.
We accept USDT-TRC20 and Visa, Mastercard, and Amex via Stripe only. All charges are in USD. Available payment gateways are determined by the response from the backend. Before paying, check the order amount, billing term, and network. For billing issues, contact us through a console support ticket or support email.
There’s more to do after connecting: manage dependencies, caches, code signing, and artifacts. These practical development notes can help you decide which tasks to move to the cloud.
Validate ICS escaping, UTF-8 line folding, and all-day date ranges with Swift, then confirm the event semantics through an actual import.
DevOps & CI/CDExport and reparse contacts with Swift to catch lost names, numbers and labels. Keep format checks separate from iOS sharing and import tests.
AIDevelopmentGenerate and read back a stereo WAV with an executable Swift script, then reuse its frame, channel, and sample checks against your actual exporter.
New articles are in the works. In the meantime, browse theblog.
Start with $21.7/day on Desk M4. Connect once, run a build, and export an artifact. Then decide how long to rent it for next.
Pay in USD with USDT-TRC20 or Visa, Mastercard, or Amex via Stripe. Available payment gateways are shown at checkout.