
OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover - tambourine_man
https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/blob/master/README.md
======
Wowfunhappy
Hackintosh has a tendency to create amusing technical problems, so I thought
I'd share some I've come across over the years.

\---

I had one computer that would only boot if a specific USB Bluetooth adapter
was connected. If it wasn't inserted while the computer turned on, I'd get a
kernel panic during the bootup process. However, I could unplug the adapter
after boot and everything would be fine.

I didn't notice the problem until several months after I'd set up the
Hackintosh, when I tried to replace my current Bluetooth adapter with a more
powerful "class 1" dongle.

(I don't remember how I eventually fixed this.)

\---

I had another computer which wouldn't boot outside of safe mode. I couldn't
remember the flag for turning on extra debug messages, but instead of looking
it up like a smart person, I guessed and typed "debug=yes". This did not
enable any extra messages, but it did cause the computer to boot correctly.

As far as I can tell, debug=yes is not a valid kernel flag. At least at the
time, there was no information about it anywhere on the internet. But this
computer would not boot without it. Removing the flag caused it to once again
get stuck, and adding it back made everything work again.

\---

This one didn't happen to me personally. I was browsing some Hackintosh forum,
and I came across a thread titled (paraphrasing):

> Help! Audio only works while I'm moving my mouse!

This might be my favorite technology problem ever.

~~~
vasac
At the time I was starting with Hackintosh it was unable to boot every now and
then. I couldn't figure out what's going on because months could pass without
any issues.

At the end it turned out that boot went right only if my microserver (NAS) was
turned on. I guess I had an SMB mount that failed before GUI even started.
Couple of weeks after I figured what was going on a new version of macOS was
published and I switched - never had similar problem again.

Even now I'm not 100% sure that networking issue was exact cause but it
certainly looked that way at the time.

~~~
wayneftw
I have had these same kind of problems with regular Macs.

My 2010 Mac Pro won’t boot without a specific type of DVI cable and display.
Certain standard USB peripherals (including some mice) don’t work or cause
other problems on my 2015 Macbook Pro while they work just fine on my Linux or
Windows machines.

This is not just a problem with Hackintoshes.

------
x3sphere
I use OpenCore but have switched my Hackintosh system over to running in a VM
(using GPU passthrough). It's easier for me to backup / make changes this way,
and there is only a minor performance hit. This is a Geekbench run from my VM
(Core i9 10940x with 4 cores passed through):
[https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15395105](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15395105)

I have a Windows 10 VM running on a same system too. It may not be suitable if
you require virtualization inside macOS itself though. Nested virtualization
doesn't work too well with the Android emulator, in my experience.

~~~
rubatuga
If you're looking to create a macOS VM (w/ GPU Passthrough), I've made a
detailed guide here: [https://github.com/yoonsikp/macOS-KVM-PCI-
Passthrough](https://github.com/yoonsikp/macOS-KVM-PCI-Passthrough)

I believe my guide is better at avoiding GPU driver initialization problems
than others. I'll need to update it to support OpenCore however.

~~~
MegaDeKay
Consider taking a look at this Opencore setup specifically configured for KVM
and GPU passthrough.

[https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM-Opencore](https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM-
Opencore)

------
mmm_grayons
I just built a new hackintosh with opencore, and compared to clover, it was so
much nicer. The documentation [0] is excellent; I'm able to grok what each
option does rather than just guessing. It also feels so much less janky than
clover did. Better filevault support, faster, leave SIP on, etc. It's also
better in that one can avoid polluting /L/E /S/L/E, which will also allow
users to keep running kexts even after Apple deprecates third-party ones.

[0]:
[https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/blob/master/Docs/...](https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/blob/master/Docs/Configuration.pdf)

~~~
Moto7451
Ditto. I built one last week. Everything was straightforward and the
documentation great.

My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo
cult advise out there. Figuring out my Audio took longer than it should as
finding the layout-id for my ALC892 was buried in threads where everyone kept
parroting “use ID 1, 2, and 3 or just keep trying numbers until it works.” My
board needed layout-id 7 and it took a while to find out that I could use
IORegistryExplorer to search for “HDAS” (my ACPI device name) and read the
value from the table listed.

~~~
mmm_grayons
> My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of
> cargo cult advise out there.

Absolutely right. I think the issue behind this is that many people are
repeating advice without understanding _why_ it matters because it worked for
them. So, you end up with people cargo-culting SSDT overlays, boot arguments,
and other miscellaneous settings. This is somewhat inevitable with something
technical, but it's exacerbated by a couple things:

1\. many people in the Hackintosh community are very gatekeep-y. While others
are very nice, I remember a few years ago being told to "go read the entire
ACPI standard and the come back!" Reading about stuff is important, but it's
pretty hard to figure out what the correct stuff is to read.

2\. A lack of a centralized documentation repository (this is being fixed by
OpenCore and others) to explain when different pieces of advice apply or
don't. This is especially important on laptops where there may be some obscure
quirk of one's particular hardware revision that is much easier found if
everyone puts documentation in the same place.

I mostly gave up on hackintosh a few years ago because of all this, but have
found it so much better and nicer as of late. Big thanks to the acidanthera
guys who seem to be driving a lot of this change.

~~~
improbable22
These are true. But also, I think some of the weirdness is that a lot of
people only do this once, struggle, and then move on. So the forums are full
of people trying to find others with the same problem which none of them
understand.

------
tdiggity
As another data point - Building a hackintosh is so much simpler now than it
was 5 years ago.

The reddit forum at r/hackintosh is pretty helpful for getting started and has
a nice repository of builds.

AMD Ryzen CPUs are fairly well supported now. My current system is a 3700x
with radeon 5700xt gpu. I use OSX for my daily work, and Windows 10 for
gaming. It's a great setup for $1000. My OSX geekbench specs beat out the
latest standard 16" Macbook Pros.

For developers - One thing to note is that Docker is not supported with AMD
hackintoshes. There are some workarounds but they seem fragile. Otherwise,
everything else works great for me. I am mostly on cloud based apps/tools.
Others also pointed out that Adobe, and vmware has issues. virtual box works.

~~~
_fzslm
also Adobe software requires patches, which is a little bit more of a
dealbreaker.

~~~
unicornfinder
To be honest quite a few apps don't seem to play nicely without the Intel-
specific instructions present. REAPER won't run at all, Cubase crashes unless
you remove the surround panner VST, Pro Tools would crash on launch last time
I tried it (but this may have been fixed since)...

------
antimatter15
I was a little bit confused what Clover was referring to— "Clover EFI is a
boot loader developed to boot OS X (Hackintoshes), Windows and Linux in legacy
or UEFI mode."
([https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Clover](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Clover))

------
buzzert
If anyone has an Intel NUC that they were thinking of turning into a
hackintosh, there’s a really great guide/set of documentation out there for a
project called HaC Mini[1] which is based on OpenCore. This was my first
exposure to OpenCore after being a long time Clover user and it was very good!

[1] [https://osy.gitbook.io/hac-mini-guide/](https://osy.gitbook.io/hac-mini-
guide/)

~~~
Hamuko
The latest i9 NUCs look like a great Mac Mini replacement if they're
Hackintoshable. Although they seem to be quite pricey.

~~~
Rebelgecko
The NUCs with CPUs comparable to the one that the Mac Minis offer are a lot
cheaper (since they're a few generations old). Around $500 or so if you bring
your own memory

------
danieldk
This seems to be a more generally useful link?

[https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-
Guide/](https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/)

It has links to other parts of the guide in the sidebar.

~~~
ghostpepper
Introducing something as an unconventional first-in-class piece of software is
not very descriptive IMHO.

I think this would be better described by the problem it solves, which I am
guessing has to do with MacOS refusing to boot on non-Apple UEFI code, which I
presume the Hackintosh community has not been able to obtain?

Saying it's better than Clover also doesn't help anyone who isn't already
familiar with the problem.

~~~
zadokshi
Yep, the intro is super weird.

------
kposehn
I’ve been using a Hack Pro for several months with OpenCore. It took a bit to
learn my way through the docs as they were not terribly clear when I started
but once I was up and running it was nice.

I was largely happy with it, as the machine was extremely fast and very, very
quiet. I also had FileVault running too along with SIP. However, the main
issues I had were stability - these machines are generally nowhere near as
stable as a regular Mac as there are many small issues which over time can
become big (restarting on wake from sleep, unreliable internet, disconnecting
from iCloud, etc).

Depending on your use case, these may not be an issue. However, Opencore was
vastly better than Clover and if you want to try this I’d start there first.

~~~
runjake
My OpenCore-based Hackintosh has been rock solid with the sole exceptions of
Sidecar (iPad as an additional monitor) Apple Watch Unlock, which sometimes
work and sometimes doesn’t. I currently do not care enough to put much effort
into it. Everything else works perfectly: iMessages, AirDrop, iCloud, etc.

This is not to discredit the parent comment, but rather to stress the
importance of choosing your parts for maximum Hackintosh compatibility.

I built my PC to be a Hackintosh. I choose the build parts that were most
compatible. Trying to Hackintosh arbitrary PC builds is above my tolerance
threshold.

If you don’t want to mess with your Hackintosh all the time, go this route. If
you don’t want to have to mess with your Hackintosh at all, buy a Mac.

~~~
divbzero
What resource(s) would you recommend for identifying compatible parts?

~~~
omnimus
[https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-
customac-h...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-customac-
hackintosh-the-ultimate-buyers-guide/)

------
hashmymustache
It's too bad Apple is blocking Nvidia from releasing graphics card drivers for
the more recent OSX versions.

~~~
eralps
I have been a hackintosh user for the last 3-4 years. I was shocked when I had
problems with the GTX1060 I bought. I am using High Sierra because of this.

IIRC AMD hardware was the one without support for a long time. It is weird how
it changed all of a sudden.

~~~
djmobley
I gave up waiting and switched to an AMD card for the native macOS support. No
regrets.

Everything works flawlessly out of the box and I no longer have to wait for
Nvidia drivers before installing updates.

------
pottertheotter
I just used this to build a Hackintosh earlier this week. Took a while to go
through the docs and figure out which files and config settings I needed, but
install was smooth and I haven't had any problems.

------
oneplane
I wonder if the VT-d disablement is required for the rootkit to work. Ideally
you'd have VT-d in macOS for virtual machines, but then again you also don't
have Thunderbolt so maybe it's simply not complete enough to enable
'everything'. (and if you really need everything you should probably just buy
a Mac anyway)

~~~
roblabla
I think the story is something like macos fails to parse the DMAR table
properly, or something along those lines. If you drop the DMAR ACPI table you
don't need to disable VT-d. If you disable Intel Virtualization support from
the kernel via the dart=0 kernel flag, you don't need to disable VT-d.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> If you disable Intel Virtualization support from the kernel via the dart=0
> kernel flag

So _that_ is what dart=0 does!

I have Googled this, many times, as with several other weird kernel flags. Not
even because I want to fix something, but because I'm curious about what's
happening!

Every time, without fail, all I ever find are random forum threads of people
saying "this flag fixed my computer", or maybe "You need to enable this flag
because it makes your PC act more like a Mac" or some such. It's so
frustrating!

------
victorhooi
Has anybody tried getting this to work under Proxmox (specifically) or KVM?

I previously used to use this guide for Proxmox - which uses Clover:

[https://www.nicksherlock.com/2019/10/installing-macos-
catali...](https://www.nicksherlock.com/2019/10/installing-macos-
catalina-10-15-on-proxmox-6/)

However, it seems like OC might be easier.

Somebody there suggested this (apparently non-open-source) EFI making script:

[https://www.macos86.it/files/file/20-opencore-efi-
maker/](https://www.macos86.it/files/file/20-opencore-efi-maker/)

but I can't even seem to get that working.

Another poster on this thread suggested

[https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM-Opencore](https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM-
Opencore)

which seems like it could work - curious if other people have tried it and
what their experiences are?

~~~
josteink
I run OSX under KVM with clover.

I’ve used this guide: [https://github.com/kholia/OSX-
KVM](https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM)

------
jeroenhd
Every time I see OpenCore I feel like trying to make a Hackintosh again, but
then I remember that my GPU is an Nvidia one and that it will never have
drivers on any recent macOS releases.

My laptop is another contender, but that has an Intel wireless card so that
will never be supported either. The network card issue can probably be worked
around through some virtualisation, but the laptop CPU is too old to do IOMMU
properly so doing a KVM Hackintosh is impossible as well.

~~~
pottertheotter
No Nvidia drivers is very frustrating. I built a Hackintosh in mid 2017 with a
GTX 1080 and it was a dream. Accidentally killed my build and didn't have time
to figure out how to fix it, so I was using my hardware as an Ubuntu server
for a lot of data processing and machine learning. Finally turned it back into
a Hackintosh again this week and was so bummed to find out Mojave and Catalina
don't have Nvidia drivers.

Granted, it's still way better than the mid-2012 MBA I was using, but I wish I
could still use that GPU.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Personally, I would just throw High Sierra back on the machine. It's the best
of the semi-recent macOS releases anyway.

It's going to go out of support when 10.16 is presumably released this fall,
but... I don't know, live a little!

------
t0mislav
What is current state of Hackintosh this days? Is it stable?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I set up my first Hackintosh in 2011 while on Spring Break in High School.

It was the most difficult computing project I'd ever done up until that point
--partly because it was legitimately more difficult back then, partly because
I was using a pre-built Dell instead of a custom machine with parts targeting
Hackintosh, and also probably because I was a stupid teenager who didn't know
what he was doing.

But once I was done, it was absolutely stable. Everything worked[1]. I
installed every point release update[2] through the normal software updater
without problems. This was actually my first experience with OS X, and I
completely fell in love with the platform.

Many people who haven't used Hackintosh seem to assume it's an unstable mess,
and it certainly _can_ be a mess if you don't set it up correctly, or attempt
to use not-quite-compatible hardware. But my experience has been that if and
when you set it up properly, Hackintosh can be every bit as stable as a real
Mac.

\---

[1] Except for sleep. Getting sleep working on Hackintosh is very doable but
usually annoying, and it's not needed on desktops.

[2] Ie 10.6.5 ==> 10.6.8. Upgrading Snow Leopard ==> Lion almost certainly
would have failed had I tried it, although such upgrades are sometimes
possible nowadays with Clover, and I assume OpenCore.

~~~
throwlaplace
>on desktops.

how about on laptops? not sleep itself but hackintoshing a laptop? i really
want workspaces on whatever laptop i use but i don't want to pay through the
nose for a macbook - i have a loner 2013 mbp right now and even those are
still selling for like $800.

~~~
doteka
So this is a genuinely surprising attitude to me. You appreciate the software
features and hardware stability of a platform, yet you do not want the
creators to be paid for their work?

I mean, it must be obvious that doing these things well apparently costs tons
of man-hours and someone needs to be compensated for it? How do you maintain
that degree of cognitive dissonance?

~~~
throwlaplace
lol at the accusatory and indignant tone.

1\. apple is a hardware company not a software company. to wit: they do not
sell mac os and if they did i might buy it.

2\. i don't care a lick about any _other_ features or "stability"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845629)).
i simply said that i appreciated the workspaces feature. can i buy this
feature ala carte? i would gladly. can i pay the devs that built it for their
work? i would gladly.

3\. i maintain my cognitive dissonance the same way you do when paying a 2x
markup for commodity hardware.

edit: man every day i can't help but feel more and more that people in tech
(at least as this site reflects) are some of the most self-righteous.

~~~
mwcampbell
I'm with doteka on this. I think techie entitlement is a bigger problem than
self-righteousness. As Kyle Mitchell (kemitchell on HN) put it recently in his
essay "No Thanks" [1]:

> From outside software looking in, “software freedom” walks and talks a lot
> more like “coder entitlement” or “coder privilege”. In short, a hacker on a
> tear should never hear the word “no”. Not when breaking into offices to
> steal parts for a train set. Not when contending with a printer they didn’t
> develop or pay for. Not when building the next hot web or mobile app …
> again. Not when building a war cloud or optimizing a baby-photo
> reinforcement schedule for grandma.

Do we not realize how entitled and selfish we are?

And no, I've never done a hackintosh, either virtual or physical.

[1]: [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/04/17/No-
Thanks.html](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/04/17/No-Thanks.html)

~~~
throwlaplace
>Do we not realize how entitled and selfish we are?

jesus christ what are you talking about. i should feel morally obligated to a
corporation? or maybe tim cook himself? this isn't a moral quandary or
question and never will be. you people have deeply internalized a relationship
to money and corporations that is perverse. like any good business person
would say: it's not personal it's business - if they want to prevent me from
using their software in a way that violates the EULA or whatever then cool
they can try to stop me (note: they have in the past and will continue into
the future and so the world will turn).

re those poor poor apple engineers: apple's market cap is 1.24T (that's a
capital T for trillion). oh no will someone please think of them and their
margins! i'm (100-epsilon)% sure that not a single apple engineer will ever
suffer any hardship from a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent
of their customer/user base building hackintoshes.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Apple definitely isn't hurting right now.

But my question with piracy is always, where do you dry the line? Is pirating
Photoshop okay? What about Affinity Photo? What about Omnigroup, which makes
fantastic software, but also has to charge a lot of money for it, and was
forced to do a round of layoffs recently?

What if the app is made by a single developer, but you don't like his or her
politics? Or what if it's a single developer charging too much? How do you
determine what "too much" is, and are you really able to be a fair judge,
given that you have a personal financial stake in the outcome?

As a Hackintosh user, I don't have all the answers. I tell myself Hackintosh
is okay because I used a real Mac to download the installer, but that's still
a moral judgement I'm not able to make impartially. I do try to avoid pirating
all forms of digital media, though, even when it means there are products I
simply cannot use due to lack of finances.

~~~
throwlaplace
> But my question with piracy is always, where do you dry the line?

this has already been hashed out during the late 90s and early 00s in the
context of media piracy: software and media are non-rivalrous goods. me
pirating the good does not prevent anyone else from purchasing. it is not a
loss to the developer or content creator because i was never going to purchase
it in the first place.

> but that's still a moral judgement I'm not able to make impartially

there are zero moral issues implicated here. property is outside of morality.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> it is not a loss to the developer or content creator because i was never
> going to purchase it in the first place.

How do you _know_ that you were "never going to purchase it in the first
place"? There are lots of products where I initially looked at the price tag,
thought "that's ridiculous", and walked away—but eventually came back and
bought it, sometimes kicking and screaming.

Again, I don't think I can make a fair judgement about what I "would buy" when
I have a financial stake in convincing myself one way. And I don't think
anyone else can actually do it either.

~~~
throwlaplace
> Again, I don't think I can make a fair judgement about what I "would buy"
> when I have a financial stake

i'm at a loss for to how parse this let alone how to respond to it. who else
but you "can make a fair judgement" about whether you'll buy something?

i don't have shifting perspectives on whether i'll buy something - i either
decide to buy something or i decide not to buy it. if i decide to buy
something _but i don 't have money for it_ i save money and buy it eventually.

to drive home the point: i pirate movies instead of going to theaters. if some
movie that i was interested in seeing never gets released on some torrent site
i do not buy that movie i simply do not watch it. on the other hand i do buy
books even though i could pirate them easily.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> who else but you "can make a fair judgement" about whether you'll buy
> something?

I can make a fair judgement when "not buying" means I don't get the product.

------
sahin-boydas
This will give so many opportunities to people who can pay their 10x monthly
income to a buy 2-year-old mac :))

I think Apple had a stupid idea to become more luxurious and hire Angela Jean
Ahrendts for 100M. God bless they realize, if they go for volume and price
aggressive (as Steve Jobs said), more people can benefit.

I want hackintosh to work so well that indirectly, it will force Apple to
develop way cheaper computers for the whole world.

~~~
agildehaus
Apple appears to be headed in the direction of making their own processors for
their desktops and laptops, so this Hackintosh business isn't going to last
much longer.

~~~
Hamuko
That's assuming that they completely abandon Intel, which would mean that the
Mac Pro would not be offered with a 28-core Intel Xeon W, but rather with an
ARM processor that has comparable performance (or not offered at all).

But even if Apple shifts to 100% ARM, Hackintosh community still has whatever
number of years that Apple still has to support the computers that they are
selling now / selling until ARM takes completely over.

------
omnimus
Two years ago i took my very old 2009 gaming pc bought fastest processor for
the socket (LGA1156) on ebay for giggles (20usd) and put hackintosh on it.

Took a weekend to figure out but after that became pretty solid. So solid in
fact that it became my main machine. I don't know what am i missing but i cut
videos, make screencasts, work in blender... it all seems just fine.

I am doing this professionally not as hobby its my main workstation.

Now i was probably pretty lucky and for soundcard i need to use external one
(i would anyway). But i am pretty sure if you buy right components you will
get as stable mac as original and you will be done in two hours not days like
me.

------
cmurf
I wonder if OpenCore would enable me to (a) passthrough an i915 GPU but not an
AMD GPU; (b) run Catalina on a Mac that doesn't support it?

I have an ancient macbookpro 8,2 with the defect that eventually leads to AMD
GPU failure (it failed, was replaced under warranty extension, failed again
same number of years later). I use GRUB iowr.mod and outb commands to disable
the AMD GPU on boot so it's not even seen by Linux. But when I boot macOS, at
some point during the session something enables discrete graphics and I get a
kernel panic. I also get a kernel panic when doing any kind of software update
(it's now stuck on 10.13.6).

~~~
haxiomic
I’ve had the same problem with 3 different 2011 MacBook Pros

There’s an nvram variable you can change to disable the discrete gpu, details
here: [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/166876/macbook-
pro...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/166876/macbook-pro-how-to-
disable-discrete-gpu-permanently-from-efi#285896)

I didn’t go the Linux-live cd route so I have to reapply the fix when nvram is
reset but other than that the machines work fine now :)

------
dreamer_soul
I just got a workstation grade Dell machine t7610 to be exact spent more than
a week trying to hackentosh it but couldn't for some reason I always got some
obscure error and none of the fixes worked. Found someone at GitHub with a
similar machine but different graphics card and still couldn't make it work.
But that got me thinking maybe there is a place for a tool where you feed it
your hardware and it generates the most optimal configuration and image

------
freakcage
is it possible to dual boot mac os and Linux/windows or even triple boot?

I search last time no support for rtx gpu card in hackintosh. So I'm thinking
to buy second gpu. What is best value gpu that support hackintosh?

My setup right now is amd r5 3600 with rtx 2060 super. I'm currently running
dual boot windows 10 & Ubuntu.

------
aledthemathguy
Can anyone let me know where do I start if i'd like to try this out?

Caveat: I am using the Pentium G4560 CPU. Is that a deal-breaker?

Thx!

------
paypalcust83
Interesting, I'll have to look at it. My T480 Clover hackintosh needs a
rebuild because battery status broke and it hangs randomly every 15 minutes-3
days. It may have something to do with the Samsung 970 Pro 1TB. I have no idea
about DSDT, so I'm going to have to dive in and debug that mess.

~~~
dddddaviddddd
What guide did you follow for your setup?

