FortiClient 6.4.8 M1 chip support

Hi! I tried to install FortiClient 6.4.8 in a M1 MacBook Air. Everything works fine but when I try to connect to my VPN there´s an error and tech support is not able to fix this error. It works fine in an Intel Windows PC. Can the chip be the issue?

I have another question, if I may ask. I´m installing Forticlient in my personal computer to access my company PC. This program is running all the time, even if i don’t connect to the VPN, and it shows “connected to EMS”. I can’t disconnect from it or prevent the program to autostart with MacOS. Who is this EMS and is it tracking my activity in my computer?

Thanks for your help.

I’m using 7.0.5 on Mac with M1 w/o issues.

Hi! I tried to install FortiClient 6.4.8 in a M1 MacBook Air.

I have no direct experience with M1-based Macs, but it isn’t surprising that an older version of FortiClient might not be compatible with M1 devices.

That said, I found the following, which seems to offer a potential workaround:

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/Fortinet-Forum/Forticlient-can-t-connect-to-VPN-on-M1-Macbook-Air/td-p/200658

This program is running all the time, even if i don’t connect to the VPN, and it shows “connected to EMS”.

EMS = FortiClient Enterprise Management Server. It’s the central management platform for your organization’s FortiClient installs. FortiClient will be running all the time because it does end-point protection, and not just VPN functionality. Even if the end-point protection piece is not active, the client is going to want to check in with its management server in order to ensure that it has up-to-date policies and is ready to respond to commands.

It is simply related to your organization’s control of the FortiClient. That’s all it will be “tracking” for the most part.

Most people are going to prefer to keep work related software off their personal machines so that these types of questions/concerns don’t arise.

Are you using SSL VPN or IPsec VPN? I would recommend for Mac, at least with the last two OS releases to just use the native MacOS VPN client and IPsec Dialup to the Fortigate. The performance is reasonable, the performance is not reasonable on the Forticlient with SSL VPN on Mac since it doesn’t support DTLS/UDP packets. A basic setup just needs on the Mac side the server host, username/password, shared secret, and group name (which can be anything, just not nothing.)

we use 6.4.5 and do a sslvpn. Have it working on M1 MAC’s we found that you have to manually setup a few settings if you open the device’s settings > Security & Privacy > Privacy then on the left hand side Full Disk Access look for the following options and if they exist make sure they are enabled (checked)

fcaptmon

fctservctl

fmon2

FortiClient

Then check the devices settings > Security & Privacy > General for a message at the bottom about the FortiTray extension “System software from application (FortiTray/FortiClientNetwork) was blocked from loading” make sure you allow that.

this kb should help

https://docs.fortinet.com/document/forticlient/6.4.8/macos-release-notes/223986/special-notices

Use 7.0.6, working for me.

This was very helpful, thanks.

I don’t really know what kind of VPN are we talking about. Thanks for taking time to try to help.

Solved. We updated the forticlient to newer version and everything worked fine

You’re very welcome.