diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index 376960d1..9c6245a1 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -144,3 +144,11 @@ Getting perl scripting to work needs a few things:
    It doesn't hurt to be defined everywhere, so configure irssi with:
 
      CFLAGS='-DUSEIMPORTLIB' ./configure --with-perl-staticlib
+
+
+ Apple MacOS / Darwin
+
+At the time of writing, meson has an open issue with correctly linking
+libraries on macos.
+
+See docs/meson-macos-ar.txt for a workaround.
diff --git a/docs/meson-macos-ar.txt b/docs/meson-macos-ar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..77e5cb8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/meson-macos-ar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+;; manual workaround for meson bug https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/11165
+;; fixes compilation with meson on apple macos
+;; usage: meson --native-file ./docs/meson-macos-ar.txt ...
+
+[binaries]
+ar = ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'ar=${AR:-ar}; ranlib=${RANLIB:-ranlib -c -}; case "x$1" in xcsr*) $ar "$@" && $ranlib "$2" || exit $?; ;; *) exec $ar "$@"; ;; esac;', 'ar']