# Generic "The installation failed" for Flox pkg installer for MacOS

**URL:** <https://discourse.flox.dev/t/generic-the-installation-failed-for-flox-pkg-installer-for-macos/1245>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [April 16, 2026, 12:03am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/generic-the-installation-failed-for-flox-pkg-installer-for-macos/1245 "2026-04-16T00:03:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jbayer](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/jbayer/32/757_2.png) [@jbayer](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/jbayer)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2026, 12:03am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/generic-the-installation-failed-for-flox-pkg-installer-for-macos/1245/1 "2026-04-16T00:03:29Z")

</div>

When running the package installer, MacOS provides a generic “The installation failed.” message without additional information as shown below.

I’m documenting this for posterity and search results in case someone else encounters it. Someone recently reported this and we discovered the issue, so I wanted to capture the issue, the troubleshooting, and the solution.

 ![flox-macos-pkg-installer-failed](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/uploads/floxdev/original/1X/cff56e1cca917152ba8b9eb3830e120859dbb717.png)

The [installation troubleshooting page](https://flox.dev/docs/install-flox/troubleshooting/#macos) has detailed instructions for how to retrieve the flox installation logs that are located `/var/log/install.log` and see if there are additional details. In this particular case, the MacOS FileVault was interfering with the `/nix/store` mount process. Often this is addressed by rebooting as it was in this case where that fixed the issue and the install was able to complete.

```auto
package_script_service[1858]: ./postinstall: error: failed to bootstrap /nix
package_script_service[1858]: ./postinstall: If you enabled FileVault after booting, this is likely a known issue

```

A similar issue was discussed [here](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/6989).