If you are using Linux or macOS, the easiest way to install Nix is to run the following command: $ sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) As of Nix 2.1.0, the Nix installer will always default to creating a single-user installation, however opting in to the multi-user installation is highly recommended.

To explicitly select a single-user installation on your system: sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) --no-daemon This will perform a single-user installation of Nix, meaning that /nix is owned by the invoking user. You should run this under your usual user account, not as root. The script will invoke sudo to create /nix if it doesn’t already exist. If you don’t have sudo, you should manually create /nix first as root, e.g.: $ mkdir /nix $ chown alice /nix The install script will modify the first writable file from amongst .bash_profile, .bash_login and .profile to source ~/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh. You can set the NIX_INSTALLER_NO_MODIFY_PROFILE environment variable before executing the install script to disable this behaviour. You can uninstall Nix simply by running: $ rm -rf /nix

The multi-user Nix installation creates system users, and a system service for the Nix daemon. Linux running systemd, with SELinux disabled macOS You can instruct the installer to perform a multi-user installation on your system: sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon The multi-user installation of Nix will create build users between the user IDs 30001 and 30032, and a group with the group ID 30000. You should run this under your usual user account, not as root. The script will invoke sudo as needed. If you need Nix to use a different group ID or user ID set, you will have to download the tarball manually and edit the install script. The installer will modify /etc/bashrc, and /etc/zshrc if they exist. The installer will first back up these files with a .backup-before-nix extension. The installer will also create /etc/profile.d/nix.sh. You can uninstall Nix with the following commands: sudo rm -rf /etc/profile/nix.sh /etc/nix /nix ~root/.nix-profile ~root/.nix-defexpr ~root/.nix-channels ~/.nix-profile ~/.nix-defexpr ~/.nix-channels # If you are on Linux with systemd, you will need to run: sudo systemctl stop nix-daemon.socket sudo systemctl stop nix-daemon.service sudo systemctl disable nix-daemon.socket sudo systemctl disable nix-daemon.service sudo systemctl daemon-reload # If you are on macOS, you will need to run: sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist There may also be references to Nix in /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc, and /etc/zshrc which you may remove.

NixOS.org hosts version-specific installation URLs for all Nix versions since 1.11.16, at https://releases.nixos.org/nix/nix-version/install. These install scripts can be used the same as the main NixOS.org installation script: sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) In the same directory of the install script are sha256 sums, and gpg signature files.

You can also download a binary tarball that contains Nix and all its dependencies. (This is what the install script at https://nixos.org/nix/install does automatically.) You should unpack it somewhere (e.g. in /tmp), and then run the script named install inside the binary tarball: alice$ cd /tmp alice$ tar xfj nix-1.8-x86_64-darwin.tar.bz2 alice$ cd nix-1.8-x86_64-darwin alice$ ./install If you need to edit the multi-user installation script to use different group ID or a different user ID range, modify the variables set in the file named install-multi-user.