OpnEarth
Purpose-built
Drag the file in and it draws, with the sender's own KML styling. Native, offline, no project to manage. Not a GIS, and no Google imagery: both by design.
Mac beta. Early access opening soon
Earth Pro is ending on macOS.
Earth Pro is ending on macOS.
Your KMZ files aren't.
OpnEarth is a Mac desktop globe for KML and KMZ: a signed universal build, tuned for Apple Silicon. Drag a file in and it opens straight away, including the ones that stop everything else. No project file, no projection dialog, no connection.
macOS 13 Ventura or later · Apple Silicon and Intel · On Windows or Linux?
OpnEarth · national_broadband.kmz
What's happening
Google Earth Pro desktop is ending on macOS
Google is ending Google Earth Pro desktop support on macOS. An existing install may keep launching for a while, but it is no longer a maintained path, and for a lot of people that application was not a toy. It was the only convenient way to open a multi-hundred-megabyte KMZ of fiber routes, survey data, service areas or site plans and actually look at it.
Your files are fine: KML and KMZ are open formats. What you need is a viewer that renders them faithfully at that scale, on a current Mac. That is exactly what OpnEarth is for, and it is the same engine on Windows and Linux, where Earth Pro still runs but crawls on files this size.
Instant
On Apple Silicon
Even the exports that stall every other viewer.
Universal
Signed & notarized
One .dmg for Apple Silicon and Intel.
Light
Memory footprint
Kind to unified memory, however big the file is.
Zero
Network required
Local files open with the Wi-Fi off.
Alternatives
The Mac options, honestly assessed
Four things people are told to use after Earth Pro. Only one of them is built for the "a vendor emailed me a KMZ nothing will open" case.
Google Earth Web
Official, but limited
Keeps Google's imagery, and it is free. But it chokes on the files that matter, needs a browser tab and a connection, and your file goes up to open it.
QGIS
Powerful, heavier
A full GIS, which is the problem here. Opening a KMZ means an import dialog, layers, projections and a styling session, and big files load slowly. Fine for geoprocessing, heavy for looking at a file somebody sent you.
ArcGIS Pro
Capable, expensive
Enterprise-grade, priced that way, and with no native Mac desktop. Still not built for "just open this file someone emailed me."
On Apple Silicon
A Mac app, not a port
Sized to your cores
Ingest runs multi-threaded, sized to the machine's performance cores, with SIMD coordinate parsing. Apple Silicon's unified memory and Intel Macs' discrete GPUs get separate tuning.
Mac conventions kept
Open with ⌘O or by dropping a file on the window, a resizable sidebar with your open documents, and a workspace that reopens exactly where you left it, camera included.
Untrusted input, treated as such
A KMZ arrives by email from a vendor. Parsing is sandboxed away from the filesystem, archive paths cannot escape the extraction root, and the adversarial test suite ships with the code.
Your data stays yours
Local files open with no network at all. Publishing a map is an explicit, per-map action, and it uploads derived tiles, never the source file you were sent.
FAQ
Earth Pro on Mac, answered
The five questions people actually search for, including the one about Google's imagery.
Is Google Earth Pro being discontinued on macOS?+
Google is ending Earth Pro desktop support on macOS. An existing install may keep launching for a while, but it is no longer a supported path, which leaves anyone who used it to open large KML or KMZ files without a maintained tool.
What is the best Earth Pro alternative for Mac?+
For the core Earth Pro task of opening a large KML or KMZ and looking at it, OpnEarth is built for exactly that on macOS: a native universal build that opens the files other viewers stall on, keeps the author's styling, and needs no project or connection. Earth Web is the official browser option but chokes on exactly those files; QGIS is a heavier way to view a file.
Can I still open my old KMZ files?+
Yes. KML and KMZ are open formats, so nothing is locked. You need a viewer that renders them faithfully at scale. OpnEarth reads styles, StyleMaps, folders, balloons and ground overlays, and exports to GeoJSON and KML so the data is never trapped.
Does it run natively on Apple Silicon?+
Yes. A signed and notarized universal build, with ingest sized to your performance cores and rendering tuned separately for unified memory and for Intel Macs' discrete GPUs.
Does it include Google's satellite imagery?+
You bring your own, and that turns out to be the better answer. OpnEarth ships open and commercially licensable imagery and elevation sources, and lets you mount your own orthophotography or local MBTiles and PMTiles, so the imagery in your map is imagery you control. Google's own imagery is not available to any third-party product, with or without your own API key: their terms do not permit Maps content to be used with a non-Google map, and do not permit caching it for offline use.
Earth Pro is going.
Take your workflow with you.
Early access opens to the list first. Tell us what you are trying to open on your Mac and we will test against it.
macOS 13+. No spam, just one email when the beta opens.