There is a bitcoin-cli available for OSX. I also ran into this issue, and it is because I missed one of the setup steps. Here they are for posterity!
Install Xcode:
$ xcode-select --install
Install Homebrew =>
https://brew.sh/
Clone the repo:
$ git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
Navigate into bitcoin directory, and run the autogen script:
$ cd bitcoin
$ ./autogen.sh
The autogen.sh script creates a set of automatic configuration scripts
that will interrogate your system to discover the correct settings and
ensure you have all the necessary libraries to compile the code.
Run the configure script:
$ ./configure
This will automatically discover all the necessary libraries and
create a customized build script for your system.
If all went well, the configure command will end by creating the
customized build scripts that will allow us to compile bitcoind.
Compile the bitcoin source:
$ make
Install the executables on your system:
$ sudo make install
Default install location of bitcoind is /usr/local/bin.
Confirm Bitcoin Core is installed:
$ which bitcoind
/usr/local/bin/bitcoind
$ which bitcoin-cli
/usr/local/bin/bitcoin-cli
Full disclosure this information worked for me, and it is from Andreas M. Antonopoulos' Mastering Bitcoin book!
bitcoind
is actually running?bitcoind
(the daemon) does, though. So, you might want to try runningbitcoind -daemon
instead. I have no clue whether any of this is the same for Mac, though.