Instructions for installing Matlab on your Mac

These are the instructions for installing Matlab on your computer. The basic steps are:

These steps are expanded in details below.

Step 1: Creating a Mathworks account and activating it

  1. Go to the Mathworks website: http://www.mathworks.com.au. Click on Create Account near the top right corner of the page.
  2. You will be prompted to fill in a form and you must use your UNSW email address (e.g. z1234567@student.unsw.edu.au) in the form.
  3. For the question "How will you use MathWorks software?", select "Student use of MATLAB and Simulink Student Version"
  4. Fill out the rest of the form (at least the compulsory part indicated by *) and click continue. Continue to fill out the next page, at least the compulsory part, then click continue.
  5. An email will be sent to your UNSW email address. Follow the instructions in the email to have email address verified.

Step 2: Obtaining the serial number from the UNSW IT 

  1. Go to the following web address: https://www.it.unsw.edu.au/students/software/matlab.html
  2. Please take some time to read the licensing conditions at the bottom of the page.
  3. After that, return to the top of the page and click on "Download product and view licensing information" (the text block that has a light yellow background).
  4. You will be asked to authenticate using your zID and zPass. You will reach a page where the top of the page is shown below:
  5. You do not need to follow the instructions there as we have expanded the instructions in this document. If you look at the middle of the page, there is a long serial number and you will need that later on. Keep this page open as you will need to come back to get the long serial number.

Step 3: Installing the software

Insert the USB memory stick and copy the content to the desktop. The installer will start and you can use the default options (Installation from Internet, and note that you will need your Mathworks account and the activation key). The process may take 20 minutes depending on your computer.

At the end of the installation, it will ask you to activate the software. Again follow the instructions and use the default option. It may ask for your Mathworks account details and you need to confirm it.

For Windows users, this is it. For Mac users, see the next step.


Step 4: Installing X11 (Mac only)

Go to Applications and start Matlab. If you don't have X11 installed on your Mac, Matlab will ask you to install it. Go to this webpage http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/ (see below), download the software and install XQuartz. This software is under 70MBytes and would only take a short time to download.