Gephi on OS X

So you're having some minor issues with Gephi on OS X?

Well thankfully it's not just me then. Most of you probably have a PC, in which case you won't have any issues running Gephi at all. But if you "think different" like me (remember that ad campaign) and have a Mac with an operating system of OS X 10.9, 10.10, or 10.11 Gephi won't start for you. The fix is the same no matter what your operating system version is, so you won't even need to check.

The reason why this doesn't work is because the Mac operating system has moved to a more recent version of Java (which is a programming language) and Gephi expects an older version. Fortunately, it's a pretty easy, generally foolproof, fix if you follow the instructions here.

Step 1 Download Gephi 0.8.2-beta

Step 2 Download and install Java 1.6 here

Step 3 Open the terminal application. If you navigate to Applications and then Utilities you will see it there.

Step 4 Delete the settings directory by copying, pasting, and executing this command in terminal.
rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/gephi

Step 5 Find your java home location by copying, pasting, and executing this command in terminal.
/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6

Step 6 Now execute this command in terminal, it will add this new java home location to the gephi configuration file.
echo "jdkhome=\"$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6)\"" >> /Applications/Gephi.app/Contents/Resources/gephi/etc/gephi.conf

Step 7 Start Gephi and open the Les Miserables sample file. In the top toolbar of the program there is a button called Overview, if you click it you should see a network.

Step 8 Next click the button in the top toolbar labelled Preview. On the Preview screen at the bottom there is a button labelled Refresh, click it. You should see a very nicely drawn network on the screen now.