macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

[serr]

My definition of "clean install" is the very same.

So... even though we had 10.13 and native firmware support for APFS, the installer for 10.14 must still initially be pointed to a HFS+ formatted drive? Is that a statement or a guess? (The "That doesn't sound right..." part is hopefully apparent.

I didn't try that yet (clean install to HFS+). Maybe I will and give it one last chance.

I've got to say though. Running in 10.14 and poking around a bit (issues already mentioned aside)...
This OS makes the computer crawl! This is VERY noticeably slow and laggy. Like "Dell running Windows" slow! Not even exaggerating. Not just extra long boot times but genuine slow laggy response.

To the trash heap with this OS!
I think 10.13.6 might the end of the line for OSX folks. Someone grab the fork...

 

[0403979]

My definition of "clean install" is the very same.

So... even though we had 10.13 and native firmware support for APFS, the installer for 10.14 must still initially be pointed to a HFS+ formatted drive? Is that a statement or a guess? (The "That doesn't sound right..." part is hopefully apparent.

I didn't try that yet (clean install to HFS+). Maybe I will and give it one last chance.

I've got to say though. Running in 10.14 and poking around a bit (issues already mentioned aside)...
This OS makes the computer crawl! This is VERY noticeably slow and laggy. Like "Dell running Windows" slow! Not even exaggerating. Not just extra long boot times but genuine slow laggy response.

To the trash heap with this OS!
I think 10.13.6 might the end of the line for OSX folks. Someone grab the fork...

Maybe next year will be better. I’m getting in performance improvements but probably more metal implementation. Next year might the last for non-metal devices.

 

[ASentientBot]

Maybe next year will be better. I’m getting in performance improvements but probably more metal implementation. Next year might the last for non-metal devices.

I don't see why people are complaining about Mojave. It runs very well on my 8 year old hardware, all things considered. It seems like 10% of the population grumbles about every macOS release. If you go back to 10 year old threads, people were bashing Snow Leopard for being buggy and slow. Now it's regarded as one of the most stable versions ever.

Personally, I think Mojave is better than High Sierra. I'm betting on "High Mojave" working on this hardware too, but soon after that might be the end of the line (removal of OpenGL).

 

[serr]

Maybe next year will be better. I’m getting in performance improvements but probably more metal implementation. Next year might the last for non-metal devices.

Well, 10.13 was like a bug fixed 10.12. So if that pattern plays out again maybe 10.15 will be a winner?
[doublepost=1540591572][/doublepost]

I don't see why people are complaining about Mojave. It runs very well on my 8 year old hardware, all things considered. It seems like 10% of the population grumbles about every macOS release. If you go back to 10 year old threads, people were bashing Snow Leopard for being buggy and slow. Now it's regarded as one of the most stable versions ever.

Personally, I think Mojave is better than High Sierra. I'm betting on "High Mojave" working on this hardware too, but soon after that might be the end of the line (removal of OpenGL).

10.6 was an improvement across the board way back when it was released. Not sure who was bashing it... Wasn't me.
10.7 absolutely broke Spaces. I DID whine about that at the time! And they STILL never brought back the feature.

Anyway, 10.14 may "run very well" on your 8 year old machine. My 6 year machine runs very noticeably slower on 10.14 vs 10.13. So do the other 2 machines I tried so far. Running this much slower after an update is not exactly moot point!

I DO hope they fix it and we get a couple more years at least of fresh OSX. But you know those days are numbered...

 

[thegurgz]

All - Mojave Hybrid Mode v1.0 is released (for Mojave GM)

The screenshots should be self explanatory, but this is a "fix" for our broken Mojave Light Mode. Search back for my original posts on this. You will find it here with notes and instructions. Read them carefully.

Lots of good people collaborated on this. So a special shout out to these collaborators :
@testheit @arqueox @TimothyR734 @ASentientBot @0403979 @webg3 and others...


View attachment 797799 View attachment 797800

Many more screenshots and details are available in the repo.

This is still an active project, so updates and support for upcoming Mojave updates will be coming soon. Open an Issue if you have a problem.

More documentation and a cleaner "scripted" installation will be available when time permits. Other ways of distributing are being explored.

NOTE: For the moment it is assumed that you know what you're doing and are fairly comfortable with the Terminal command line. If you are not, proceed with caution and ask for help: there are plenty of us who tested this to help.

Nothing here will brick your machine if you follow guidelines and make some quick backups (again - read instructions carefully) Ultimately, it always pays to know how to do things manually...

Do not use if you have upgraded to a beta - while it may be compatible it is highly unrecommended as each beta needs to be analyzed, patched and released. Going forward I plan on only supporting official Mojave updates, the in-between betas are too hard to track...


Enjoy (from the team)

I don't know why, but I do not get transparency in the finder bar in light mode like you have shown in the screenshots. MBP5,5 NVIDIA GeForce 9400m 256MB.
Before patch:

No transparency in light mode, but that is assumed due to the nonmetal.
After Patch:

Same goes for the App Store sidebar too. I have CoreUI and HIToolBox patches installed for the "hybrid" mode. The first time I installed the patch, I did not get transparency in the sidebar in dark or light mode. I deleted the patches from their respective folders, restarted, installed them again, and restarted. Why is it not transparent? As always, thank you for all the work you have put into this cause, I and everyone else is forever grateful for your accomplishments.

EDIT: After switching to light mode, the dark mode sidebar transparency is gone too.

 

[caincha]

• iMac12,x (systems with AMD Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Mojave. More details are located in the Current Issues section below.)

Actually the only thing weird so far on my iMac is that the install is permanently on Dark Mode.
Granted I haven't tested further because it annoyed me too much but it doesn't seem to be 'unusable' just annoying…
That being said I'll try this 'Hybrid' mode and see what's what.
BTW: why ain't this Hybrid patch on the first page…?

 

[jhowarth]

To those who use Mojave on APFS file system, I have managed to "fix" the APFS Recovery Volume to make it bootable with CMD+R and mainly with USB input devices responsive, working wifi and everything else, just follow next steps, boot from a Mojave APFS Volume, launch Terminal and type:

diskutil apfs list
{locate your "APFS Recovery Volume" diskXs3 [for an internal "APFS Container" is typically mounted on disk1s3]}

diskutil mount diskXs3
open /Volumes/Recovery

landing on Finder, double tap on the "random-numbers-letters" folder, once inside rename these files:

prelinkedkernel into prelinkedkernelbackup
immutablekernel into immutablekernelbackup
PlatformSupport.plist into PlatformSupportbackup

Don't close Finder yet, once you renamed those 3 files, press CMD+N, then from this new Finder Window press CMD+SHIFT+G (or use "Go to Folder"): /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/

while inside this path copy the file prelinkedkernel into the previous Finder Window, exactly were you renamed those 3 files, lastly rename this fresh copied file from prelinkedkernel to immutablekernel

Now you have a working APFS Recovery Volume.

edit:
On APFS scheme the "APFS Recovery Volume" is always on the 3rd (hidden) partition.

What exactly is your configuration? On a MacPro 3,1 with the APFS ROM patched and the following disk partitioning...

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk4 249.8 GB disk1s2

/dev/disk4 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +249.8 GB disk4
Physical Store disk1s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh SSD 113.9 GB disk4s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 43.1 MB disk4s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 509.5 MB disk4s3
4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB

your recipe doesn't produce a new option icon for the 10.14.0 recovery partition in the option boot selector. Also, do you really mean to discard PlatformSupport.plist entirely from the recovery partition? I would have thought the goal would be to replace that with a copy from the boot volume which had been patched to support the unsupported hardware.

Also, the movements of the prelinked kernels seem really random. On my machine, the
immutablekernel in both locations have identical md5 checksums. However the
prelinkedkernel is identical to immutablekernel in /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels but not in the recovery subdirectory. So perhaps you really just meant that the user should copy the prelinkedkernel over the immutablekernel in that recovery subdirectory?

 

[ASentientBot]

Well, 10.13 was like a bug fixed 10.12. So if that pattern plays out again maybe 10.15 will be a winner?
[doublepost=1540591572][/doublepost]

10.6 was an improvement across the board way back when it was released. Not sure who was bashing it... Wasn't me.
10.7 absolutely broke Spaces. I DID whine about that at the time! And they STILL never brought back the feature.

Anyway, 10.14 may "run very well" on your 8 year old machine. My 6 year machine runs very noticeably slower on 10.14 vs 10.13. So do the other 2 machines I tried so far. Running this much slower after an update is not exactly moot point!

I DO hope they fix it and we get a couple more years at least of fresh OSX. But you know those days are numbered...

I agree that 10.15 will likely be an improvement.

I'm actually curious if your experience on Mojave is a general trend. For me, it seems about the same as High Sierra, maybe a bit faster but that could be because I switched from Chrome to Safari.

What hardware do you have? Did you fresh install or upgrade?

And to others -- do you feel it's slower as well?

Yes, we are running on borrowed time here, but I'll take what I can get!

 

[webg3]

= youtube] bkFOgV9JWdk [/ MEDIA]

 

[Sveto]

Well, 10.13 was like a bug fixed 10.12. So if that pattern plays out again maybe 10.15 will be a winner?
[doublepost=1540591572][/doublepost]

10.6 was an improvement across the board way back when it was released. Not sure who was bashing it... Wasn't me.
10.7 absolutely broke Spaces. I DID whine about that at the time! And they STILL never brought back the feature.

Anyway, 10.14 may "run very well" on your 8 year old machine. My 6 year machine runs very noticeably slower on 10.14 vs 10.13. So do the other 2 machines I tried so far. Running this much slower after an update is not exactly moot point!

I DO hope they fix it and we get a couple more years at least of fresh OSX. But you know those days are numbered...

Pretty much everybody here is getting absolutely the same speed performance in both HFS+ and APFS on 10.14 as it was on 10.13. In your case you might have a hardware problem/damage, or a problem with the Mojave installation.
That being said, function-wise Mojave is less compared to High Sierra. Same as HighSierra had a lesser functionality compared to El Capitan. This is so, because Apple is slowly imposing their business model, which is to abolish the difference between iOS and macOS. As I have written before, in a very near future we will be allowed to only run severely limited applications bought solely from the Apple Store.
On the other hand each and every new macOS version is getting heavier to run on the same hardware, but users would never notice it, because modern hardware is able to handle much higher loads. To a contrast, power users will notice this sluggishness on older Macs, because they would often put the hardware to its limits. Basically Apple is continuously bloating the OS with flashy junk (in an effort to wow regulars, lacking knowledge) and is limiting, or even plainly removing most professional functionality pertinent to computers in general. Apple is about to bastardize the open computing as it was once known in favor of the mediocre, closed and limited iOS model. Thank god there is still Android, Windows and Linux. I really enjoy my cell with Android 8 and my PCs/Macs under latest Windows 10, so I am quite irritated, but certainly not worried by Apple's sneaky practices. I think those completely invested into the Apple ecosystem will soon get a bad taste in the mouth once the above becomes obvious.
[doublepost=1540608998][/doublepost]

Hybrid Mode v1.1 with full 32 bit support is released here.

Screenshot below shows Steam (still 32 bit) running in Hybrid "Light" Mode.

View attachment 798245

As alway, post issues, problems, enhancement requests in the github repo (how I choose to maintain this). Some are getting the hang of it and their requests are being addressed and slated for subsequent releases promptly.

Read notes and docs carefully as this is still evolving. We have been running these internally for weeks now, so generally pretty solid if you understand the approach, concept and trade-offs. Enough said.

Enjoy (or not)

Thank you very much, extremely valuable and effort demanding contribution.

 

[ASentientBot]

Pretty much everybody here is getting absolutely the same speed performance in both HFS+ and APFS on 10.14 as it was on 10.13. In your case you might have a hardware problem/damage, or a problem with the Mojave installation.
That being said, function-wise Mojave is less compared to High Sierra. Same as HighSierra had a lesser functionality compared to El Capitan. This is so, because Apple is slowly imposing their business model, which is to abolish the difference between iOS and macOS. As I have written before, in a very near future we will be allowed to only run severely limited applications bought solely from the Apple Store.
On the other hand each and every new macOS version is getting heavier to run on the same hardware, but users would never notice it, because modern hardware is able to handle much higher loads. To a contrast, power users will notice this sluggishness on older Macs, because they would often put the hardware to its limits. Basically Apple is continuously bloating the OS with flashy junk (in an effort to wow regulars, lacking knowledge) and is limiting, or even plainly removing most professional functionality pertinent to computers in general. Apple is about to bastardize the open computing as it was once known in favor of the mediocre, closed and limited iOS model. Thank god there is still Android, Windows and Linux. I really enjoy my cell with Android 8 and my PCs/Macs under latest Windows 10, so I am quite irritated, but certainly not worried by Apple's sneaky practices. I think those completely invested into the Apple ecosystem will soon get a bad taste in the mouth once the above becomes obvious.
[doublepost=1540608998][/doublepost]
Thank you very much, extremely valuable and effort demanding contribution.

Say what you want, but I think it's silly to abandon macOS. New features and increased resource requirements is the rule across all operating systems; every developer wants to fully utilize new hardware. Yes, this sucks for us with older stuff, but this is nothing new. People have been complaining about this at every software release since the 80's.

And no. They're not merging iOS and macOS. Nor will they forget us power users. This is the company that makes Xcode, FCPX, Motion, etc. A core part of Apple's customer base is developers, content creators, etc. Mac users aren't all white girls sitting in Starbucks using social media! And Apple knows that. Don't fall for the "Apple is for morons" stuff. It's silly. Ease of use ≠ lack of features.

I understand being frightened by Apple's desire for control -- they're even threatening our right to repair our hardware. I don't like it either. But macOS is going to be a solid and useful OS for years to come. You'll see.

 

[mpat]

Hi,

My installation fails with the following error:
"An internal error has occurred..", and I am asked to restart.

My current setup:
Macbook Pro 8.1 running High Sierra on a Samsung SSD (APFS).

Using Dosdude's instructions, I prepared a 16GB USB drive (Mac OS Journaled, GUID). I also tried the same with a 500GB external HDD.

I downloaded the Mojave installer using the Patcher tool. (I also used the installer from a supported MBP, but same result).

I run the installer, but after a few minutes I get the error mentioned above. I tried this a few times, but with the same results.

Please suggest what else should I do.

Thanks!

 

[jackluke]

What exactly is your configuration? On a MacPro 3,1 with the APFS ROM patched and the following disk partitioning...

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk4 249.8 GB disk1s2

/dev/disk4 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +249.8 GB disk4
Physical Store disk1s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh SSD 113.9 GB disk4s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 43.1 MB disk4s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 509.5 MB disk4s3
4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB

your recipe doesn't produce a new option icon for the 10.14.0 recovery partition in the option boot selector. Also, do you really mean to discard PlatformSupport.plist entirely from the recovery partition? I would have thought the goal would be to replace that with a copy from the boot volume which had been patched to support the unsupported hardware.

Also, the movements of the prelinked kernels seem really random. On my machine, the
immutablekernel in both locations have identical md5 checksums. However the
prelinkedkernel is identical to immutablekernel in /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels but not in the recovery subdirectory. So perhaps you really just meant that the user should copy the prelinkedkernel over the immutablekernel in that recovery subdirectory?

This is mine from a clean install or from upgrading regularly a previous HighSierra into APFS:

EFI disk0s1
APFS Container disk0s2
APFS Container Scheme disk1
APFS Volume disk1s1 (used for HighSierra or Mojave)
APFS Preboot disk1s2 (used for FileVault 2 encryption)
APFS Recovery disk1s3 (used for Recovery and CMD+R)
APFS VM disk1s4 (used for sleep image)

I believe that those who fail with CMD+R in some way has that feature associated to the "Internet Online Recovery" that's why they fail, in that case there is no escape to the platform check.

While instead upon suggestion of @ASentientBot , deleting (or renaming) the PlatformSupport.plist corresponds to editing and inserting inside it your Mac Model Machine ID. So it's not the issue.

The com.apple.boot.plist inside the APFS Recovery targets to its immutablekernel root, but neither that and the immutablekernel inside the Mojave /S/L/Prelinkedkernel won't work because they are build for the original Mojave supported machines, so it's needed a patched immutablekernel, an easy working trick is use your current prelinkedkernel patched for your machine, renaming it into immutablekernel.

I'm still looking for a way to make APFS Recovery available at startup manager but that's very hard, it handles with APFS Roles, meanwhile I've found a way to make the APFS Recovery the default system to boot, but then to boot normally you have to keep option-key and target Mojave Volume or edit the com.apple.boot.plist but this is annoying, so I will test other.

 

[the.burn]

@pkouame
I needed to switch to v1.1 to run Portal2, which is 32-Bit...
For this both HIToolbox and CoreUI needed to be replaced with the fat-framework, HIToolbox alone was not sufficent to open the game...
Now it runs
Just in case this helps you to draw any conclusions

 

[0403979]

@ASentientBot I installed 10.14.1 Beta 5 on my MacBook7,1 by running pkgutil --expand-full /Path/To/Package /Path/To/Folder and then yes | sudo cp -rf /Path/To/Extracted/Package /Volumes/Your\ Volume

 

[joelw135]

@ASentientBot I installed 10.14.1 Beta 5 on my MacBook7,1 by running pkgutil --expand-full /Path/To/Package /Path/To/Folder and then yes | sudo cp -rf /Path/To/Extracted/Package /Volumes/Your\ VolumeView attachment 798677

@0403979 where did you get the package? Also, I am not as code educated as you. If, the package were on my desktop and my HD is called Mojave HD what would the path be please give me the line of terminal code. Also can I open terminal directly on my desktop or do I have to use the patcher SD card? Thanks.

 

[kautame]

@dosdude1, I have a question about the Night Shift Patch. On my iMac 7,1 with High Sierra, I use it without any problems, but I'm going to build an eGpu compatible with Metal so that I can better upgrade to Mojave. Since the reason for patching Night Shift is that it doesn't work on Macs without Metal, is this patch going to give me any problems when my eGpu will be active?

 

[0403979]

@0403979 where did you get the package? Also, I am not as code educated as you. If, the package were on my desktop and my HD is called Mojave HD what would the path be please give me the line of terminal code. Also can I open terminal directly on my desktop or do I have to use the patcher SD card? Thanks.

You can get the package from here. If the package is on your desktop and the drive is Mojave HD then the commands should be the following:

pkgutil --expand-full ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1.pkg ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1
yes | sudo cp -rf ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1/ /

Tip: You can use / for the root volume, I used the full /Volumes/ path here because I wanted to be safe, but it's not needed. If you want to use it then replace / with /Volumes/Mojave\ HD/

 

[joelw135]

You can get the package from here. If the package is on your desktop and the drive is Mojave HD then the commands should be the following:

pkgutil --expand-full ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1.pkg ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1
yes | sudo cp -rf ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1/ /

Tip: You can use / for the root volume, I used the full /Volumes/ path here because I wanted to be safe, but it's not needed. If you want to use it then replace / with /Volumes/Mojave\ HD/

Is this done on my desktop or do I have to run it from the patcher SD?
[doublepost=1540648232][/doublepost]

You can get the package from here. If the package is on your desktop and the drive is Mojave HD then the commands should be the following:

pkgutil --expand-full ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1.pkg ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1
yes | sudo cp -rf ~/Desktop/macOSUpd10.14.1/ /

Tip: You can use / for the root volume, I used the full /Volumes/ path here because I wanted to be safe, but it's not needed. If you want to use it then replace / with /Volumes/Mojave\ HD/

I opened the terminal entered the copied line but I get this. No such file or directory for every line.
[doublepost=1540648527][/doublepost]Here is another shot.

 

[0403979]

Is this done on my desktop or do I have to run it from the patcher SD?
[doublepost=1540648232][/doublepost]

I opened the terminal entered the copied line but I get this. No such file or directory for every line.
[doublepost=1540648527][/doublepost]Here is another shot.

Those messages are normal, just run the commands and let go through, then reboot and patch.

 

[Loyd-01a]

To those who use Mojave on APFS file system, I have managed to "fix" the APFS Recovery Volume to make it bootable with CMD+R and mainly with USB input devices responsive, working wifi and everything else, just follow next steps, boot from a Mojave APFS Volume, launch Terminal and type:

diskutil apfs list
{locate your "APFS Recovery Volume" diskXs3 [for an internal "APFS Container" is typically mounted on disk1s3]}

diskutil mount diskXs3
open /Volumes/Recovery

landing on Finder, double tap on the "random-numbers-letters" folder, once inside rename these files:

prelinkedkernel into prelinkedkernelbackup
immutablekernel into immutablekernelbackup
PlatformSupport.plist into PlatformSupportbackup

Don't close Finder yet, once you renamed those 3 files, press CMD+N, then from this new Finder Window press CMD+SHIFT+G (or use "Go to Folder"): /System/Library/PrelinkedKernels/

while inside this path copy the file prelinkedkernel into the previous Finder Window, exactly were you renamed those 3 files, lastly rename this fresh copied file from prelinkedkernel to immutablekernel

Now you have a working APFS Recovery Volume.

edit:
On APFS scheme the "APFS Recovery Volume" is always on the 3rd (hidden) partition.

Hello,

Thank you for this tutorial.
When I open recovery folder using open /Volumes/Recovery, I find 8 "random-numbers-letters" folders !

My question is do I have to do the "renames" in all those folders or only in the recent one ?
I think each "random-numbers-letters" folders has been created with each Mojave Beta I have installed before in my MB7,1.

Thank you

 

[0403979]

Hello,

Thank you for this tutorial.
When I open recovery folder using open /Volumes/Recovery, I find 8 "random-numbers-letters" folders !

View attachment 798713

My question is do I have to do the "renames" in all those folders or only in the recent one ?
I think each "random-numbers-letters" folders has been created with each Mojave Beta I have installed before in my MB7,1.

Thank you

Don't trust me on this but I think you should probably delete all of the older ones.

 

[joelw135]

Those messages are normal, just run the commands and let go through, then reboot and patch.

OK thanks. I finished, but my screen doesn't show the build as yours does is there another place that shows the build?

 

[jackluke]

OK thanks. I finished, but my screen doesn't show the build as yours does is there another place that shows the build?

Open Terminal and type: system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType
That will show the most important part that is the kernel version, the others are just strings.

 

[0403979]

OK thanks. I finished, but my screen doesn't show the build as yours does is there another place that shows the build?

Does it say 10.14.1 Beta? If not, try the whole thing again.