Installing Java on OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)

The new Mavericks (10.9) showed me the "Requesting install", but nothing happened.

The solution was to manually download and install the official Java package for OS X, which is in Java for OS X 2013-005.

Update: As mentioned in the comments below, there is a newer version of this same package:

Java for OS X 2014-001

Java for OS X 2014-001 (Correcting dead line above)

Java for OS X 2014-001 includes installation improvements, and supersedes all previous versions of Java for OS X. This package installs the same version of Java 6 included in Java for OS X 2013-005.

If you only want to install the latest official JRE from Oracle, you can get it there, install it, and export the new JAVA_HOME in the terminal.

• Open your Terminal
• java -version gives you an error and a popup
• Get the JRE dmg on http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
• Install it
• In your terminal, type: export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home"
• java -version now gives you java version "1.7.0_45"

That's the cleanest way I found to install the latest JRE.

You can add the export JAVA_HOME line in your .bashrc to have java permanently in your Terminal:

echo export JAVA_HOME=\"/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home\" >> ~/.bashrc

The right place to download the JDK for Java 7 is Java SE Downloads.

All the other links provided above, as far as I can tell, either provide the JRE or Java 6 downloads (incidentally, if you want to run Eclipse or other IDEs, like IntelliJ IDEA, you will need the JDK, not the JRE).

Regarding IntelliJ IDEA - that will still ask you to install Java 6 as it apparently needs an older class loader or something: just follow the instructions when the dialog pop-up appears and it will install the JDK 6 in the right place.

Afterwards, you will need to do the sudo ln -snf mentioned in the answer above:

sudo ln -nsf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents \    /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK

(copied here as it was mentioned that "above" may eventually not make sense as answers are re-sorted).

I also set my JAVA_HOME to point to where jdk_1.7.0_xx.jdk was installed:

export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home"

Then add that to your PATH:

export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

The alternative is to fuzz around with Apple's insane maze of hyperlinks, but honestly life is too short to bother.