Error Message

xcode-select: note: No developer tools were found, requesting install.
If developer tools are located at a non-default location on disk, use sudo xcode-select --switch path/to/Xcode.app to specify the Xcode that you wish to use for command line developer tools, and cancel the installation dialog.
See man xcode-select for more details.

This shows up the first time you run a command that needs a compiler in the terminal — git, make, Homebrew, and the like.

Cause

This happens because Xcode Command Line Tools isn't installed.

It's not specific to M4 Macs — it happens on any Mac right after the initial macOS setup, or right after a clean install of the OS.

Command Line Tools includes git, clang (the C compiler), make, and more. It's also used internally when installing Homebrew or any package that needs to be built.

Solution

I hit this error on an M4 Mac, and just running:

xcode-select --install

fixed it.

That's it — this installs Command Line Tools.

Honestly, I wish the error message itself had just said that.

How to Check It Installed

xcode-select -p

If this prints a path like /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools, you're set.

By the Way

Apparently you can also install Xcode itself from the App Store, but it takes up quite a lot of disk space, so it seems like a lot of people avoid that route.

From my memory of the Intel chip era, it felt like the Mac just worked out of the box without any of this. What a pain.

But the M4 builds so much faster that I'll forgive it.

What to Include When Asking an AI Chat Tool

If you're asking an AI chat tool (ChatGPT, Claude chat, etc. — not an agent that can run commands itself), you'll need to describe your situation yourself. Pasting the following gets you a much more accurate answer:

• The full error message
• Output of xcode-select -p
• Output of sw_vers (your macOS version)
• Whether you're on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4, etc.) or Intel
• What happened when you ran xcode-select --install (did a dialog appear or not, any error message, etc.)

The xcode-select -p output and your macOS version are especially useful for narrowing down the cause.

Summary

If you're trying to use git or similar tools for the first time on a new Mac, or right after a clean install, you'll almost certainly run into this error.

In my case, running xcode-select --install was all it took.