Installing Citrix Receiver (Mac)

Citrix Receiver allows for Citrix connections to be made from lots of different types of devices, including devices running Microsoft Windows OS, Android OS, Apple iOS and the various Linux OS families. Today I will be taking a quick look at installing Citrix Receiver on Mac OS X (10.13, aka High Sierra).

I could not find Citrix Receiver on the Apple App Store on my Mac, so I had to install it via a download from Citrix.

First load up your preferred web browser (I’ve tested with both Apple Safari and Google Chrome) and browse to https://www.citrix.co.uk/downloads/citrix-receiver/mac/

The current (as of May 9th 2018) download is Receiver version 12.9.1 and the download is dmg (disk mountable image) file that comes in at just under 50MB. Once downloaded and opened the dmg file should put a disk icon on your Mac desktop.

This contains a .pkg (package) file and a .app (application) file. The “Install Citrix Receiver” file does exactly as you would expect; it installs Citrix. Double click it to begin the installation. The “Uninstall Citrix Receiver” application uninstalls (removes) Citrix Receiver.

The installer warns that you are running an installation package; proceed only if you are the owner/admin of the device and want Citrix Receiver.

Once the installer has finished it will ask if you wish to keep the disk image and package or if you want to move it to the trash.

Personally I am a fan of keeping the original (source) installation files in case of issues later on (i.e. if I need to uninstall or reinstall a particular version of an application).

To “eject” (i.e. close) the disk image, right click it and choose Eject “Citrix Receiver”.

Now go back to your preferred web browser (again, I tested Apple Safari and Google Chrome) and navigate to your organisations Citrix portal web address.

Google Chrome gave me a warning about opening Citrix Receiver for the first time and asking if I wanted to associate a file (Citrix Receiver uses .ica files) with Citrix Receiver.

Again, only proceed with setting file associations, opening new applications or trusting a website to run a plug in if you are the owner/admin of the computer and trust the site!

Clicking “Open” and “Open Citrix Receiver Launcher” opened Citrix Receiver.

Apple Safari asked if I wanted to trust my organisation’s website to use the Citrix Receiver plug in.

Clicking “Trust” opened Citrix Receiver.

When Citrix Receiver has been installed on Mac OS X it places a Citrix Receiver icon in the system bar at the top of the screen:

This icon allows the user access to Receiver (if you want to access directly to a Citrix store front rather than via a web browser), Preferences (controlling what Citrix can access locally when in a Citrix session, clear the Citrix Receiver cache), the option to check for updates and an option to Quit (close) Receiver.