[java] Determining the version of Java SDK on the Mac

I have a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard; how can I see what version of the Java SDK is installed on my Mac?

This question is related to java macos

The answer is


Which SDKs? If you mean the SDK for Cocoa development, you can check in /Developer/SDKs/ to see which ones you have installed.

If you're looking for the Java SDK version, then open up /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences. The versions of Java that you have installed are listed there.

On Mac OS X 10.6, though, the only Java version is 1.6.


The simplest solution would be open terminal

$ java -version

it shows the following

java version "1.6.0_65"
  1. Stefan's solution also works for me. Here's the exact input:

$ cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions

$ ls -l

Below is the last line of output:

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel   59 Feb 12 14:57 CurrentJDK -> /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents

1.6.0.jdk would be the answer


Open a terminal and type: java -version, or javac -version.

If you have all the latest updates for Snow Leopard, you should be running JDK 1.6.0_20 at this moment (the same as Oracle's current JDK version).


Run this command in your terminal:

$ java -version

java version "1.8.0_181"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_181-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.181-b13, mixed mode)
Cristians-MacBook-Air:~ fa$ 

On modern macOS, the correct path is /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines.

You can also avail yourself of the command /usr/libexec/java_home, which will scan that directory for you and return a list.