Download the TWS API

Install the TWS API on MacOs / Linux

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  1. Download the IB API for Mac/Unix zip file to your local machine from https://interactivebrokers.github.io/
  2. Once you have clicked “I Agree”, select the download option under the Mac/Unix section to download the API Software.
  3. This will download twsapi_macunix.<Major Version>.<Minor Version>.zip to your computer (where <Major Version> and <Minor Version> are the major and minor version numbers respectively).
    • By default, this will be in your user’s Downloads folder.
  4. Open MacOS Terminal
    1. Press the Command+Space keyboard commands to launch Spotlight.
    2. Type terminal and press Return)
  5. Navigate to your Downloads directory to find the zip file by entering cd ~/Downloads then press Return.
  6. Unzip the API folder with sudo unzip twsapi_macunix.<Major Version>.<Minor Version>.zip -d $HOME/ and press Return.
  7. Verify the API contents are successfully unzipped to your $HOME directory.
    1. cd ~/IBJts
    2. ll -la
    3. This will display a list of files in the directory, including samples, source, and API_VersionNum.txt

Notes:

  • On MacOS, if you directly open the twsapi_macunix.<Major Version>.<Minor Version>.zip file through Finder, you will receive error: “Unable to expand…… It is an unsupported format”. It is required for users to unzip the zipped TWS API file using the above MacOS Terminal command.
  • PYTHON While Updating the Python Interpreter, running python3 setup.py install may display “ModuleNotFoundError: No Module named 'setuptools':. As setuptools is deprecated, this may be fixed by:
    1. Navigate to the installation folder. By default, this is done in the terminal with cd ~/IBJts/source/pythonclient
    2. Grant write permission on the target folder (e.g. ) using sudo chmod -R 777 in order to avoid “error: could not create 'ibapi.egg-info': Permission denied”.
    3. Run python3 -m pip install .”