Is chroma still maintained?

Yes, active. Last change 6 days ago. Latest release cli-1.4.4, 6 months ago.

Widely used. 30k stars, 4 years old, by an organization. As with any download, get it from the official repo.

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How to set up chroma (chroma-core/chroma) · gitmanual

Assembly instructions

chroma-core/chroma

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PythonRust#agents#ai#ai-agents#database

Before you start

Is it free?: YesOpen source (Apache-2.0).
Still maintained?: Yes, activeLast change 6 days ago. Latest release cli-1.4.4, 6 months ago.
Can I trust it?: Widely used30k stars, 4 years old, by an organization. As with any download, get it from the official repo.

Difficulty: Moderate
Time: about 15 min
Stars: ★ 29,677
Activity: Updated this month

Saved setup from just now

Will it work on macOS?

Yes, it installs on your macOS

A ready-made macOS download is in the latest release.

Your system

macOS Windows Linux

Start here

Website ↗trychroma.comThe project's own site.

Also: Docs ↗

Heads-upBuilding it yourself? It also needs 1 setting in .env (1 secret).

Download for macOS

cli-1.4.4 · 5/5/2026 ↗

chroma-macos-arm64

binary · Apple Silicon · 60.5 MB · 626 downloads · best match

Download

Raw binary — move it onto your PATH.

curl -LO "https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/download/cli-1.4.4/chroma-macos-arm64"
chmod +x "chroma-macos-arm64"

Other macOS downloads (1)

chroma-macos-intel

binary · Intel · 63.3 MB · 181 downloads

Download

Raw binary — move it onto your PATH.

curl -LO "https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/download/cli-1.4.4/chroma-macos-intel"
chmod +x "chroma-macos-intel"

Install with a package manager

pip

pip install chromadb # python client

From the README, exactly as the maintainers wrote it.

Did you get it running?

No reports for macOS yet.

Still stuck? Get a written guide

GitManual AI Agent reads the 13 key files and writes a step-by-step guide for macOS. Once written, it's saved for everyone.

Parts list

1×Python >=3.9runtime
1×Rust stableruntime
1×pip package manager

1× settings in .env

JINA_API_KEYsecret

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[![Setup manual](https://gitmanual.com/chroma-core/chroma/badge.svg)](https://gitmanual.com/chroma-core/chroma)

Good to know

Cargo workspace — pick a crate with cargo run -p <name>.
Dockerfile available (base image: python:3.11-slim-bookworm).
Has AGENTS.md — instructions for coding agents. You can open Claude Code (or another agent) in the cloned folder and ask it to do the setup for you.
Nested projects: clients/js/examples/node/package.json, clients/js/package.json, clients/js/packages/chromadb-client/package.json, clients/js/packages/chromadb-core/package.json and 11 more

Details

License: Apache-2.0
Open issues: 979
Branch: main

Files we read (13)

.github/workflows/_build_js_bindings.yml

.github/workflows/_build_release_container.yml

.github/workflows/_build_release_pypi.yml

.github/workflows/_build_release_service_images.yml

.github/workflows/_check_rust_release.yml

.github/workflows/_check_spanner_migrations.yml

Cargo.toml

Dockerfile

README.md

clients/new-js/.env.example

docker-compose.yml

pyproject.toml

requirements.txt

2,188 files in the repo