This is the code counterpart to How to contribute to the Blender docs.

1. Build Blender locally

git clone https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender.git
cd blender

# Download the precompiled libraries
git config submodule.lib/macos_arm64.update checkout
git submodule update --init --progress lib/macos_arm64

# Build
make lite

# Run
../build_darwin_lite/bin/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender

There are two common build targets:

• make lite switches off everything that isn’t essential (Cycles, FFmpeg, Alembic, most importers and more), so it compiles much faster — use it when you work on the UI, Python or core code and want quick rebuilds.
• make builds Blender with the default feature set into ../build_darwin — use it when your change touches something lite leaves out, like Cycles rendering or video export, or when you want to test against a build that’s close to the real release.

2. Make your change

git checkout -b my-fix
# edit the code, then rebuild and test with: make lite
git commit -am "UI: Short description of the fix"

3. Set up your fork

1. Go to https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender and click Fork.
2. Go to https://projects.blender.org/user/settings/applications and create a token with repository: Read and Write.
3. Point the remotes at your fork (replace YOUR-USERNAME with your own user name):

git remote rename origin upstream
git remote add origin https://projects.blender.org/YOUR-USERNAME/blender.git

4. Push

git push --no-verify -u origin my-fix

When Git asks for a password, paste your token.

5. Open the pull request

Open the link that git push prints, set the target to blender/blender → main, add a title and a short description, and submit.