macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[jackluke]

Ask jackluke for that!works on mine!!!

It was a simple script I written using the @pkouame hybrid patches (HIToolBox and CoreUI), but consider that it was exclusively for Mojave, it won't work on Catalina, on Catalina there is the new @testheit "SkyLight hybrid patch" that will (work on Mojave too) fix all the glitched-grey "light mode" elements except the Finder-top-menu that could be fixed using a Catalina HIToolBox patched making it flat white / black with no transparency, while the other transparencies on dock, notification center, "left-pane in-app tabs" are still kept.

 

[testheit]

Here's the latest fix for light mode in Catalina (except top menubar, ask @pkouame/@jackluke for it). You need @ASentienBot's patch to make this work.
Just replace this binary with the one in /S*/L*/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/SkyLightOriginal
(Should work on every version of Catalina, regardless of the version: beta1, beta2, beta3, even later betas...)

 

[jhowarth]

Apple has added support for APFS in asr since high Sierra. there is a specific section devoted to APFS in the asr man pages.

Inverting should only fail if the disk is more than 50 perfect full. You have to leave room for the inversion.

dd is ok, but it clones UUIDs which is bad if you intend to keep both disks online on the same system. Boot from one and it will boot from whichever it finds first. dd also out of the box will create a volume at the exact size and when you try to expand the volume, it will not use the easy space. This similarly happens on NTFS under Windows. That draw back alone makes dd bad for restores if you intend to upgrade to a larger volume.

I am not having an issue with asr and APFS specifically.

The issue I am having on beta 3 with Dosdude1’s latest patches. When asr finishes, a kernel panic happens.

Run the same command on Cat 3 base system, no issues.

So I am trying to determine if it’s a patch on the full beta 3 OS or if it’s a beta 3 bug.

Ditto is not a good option either as we are dealing with multiple volumes, not to mention 3 other volumes on the APFS container. So ditto which is file based for full disk cloning is not a great solution. either. Ditto works great on a single volume as does rsync.

Again dd does too much and asr does a better job adjusting to difference size volumes. dd is a flat out sector copy and under its basic usage writes zeros to the entire disk.

Each system has its draw backs, and I may include dd as a backup later. Since asr runs fine on a base system, I won’t be switching horses. But I will be investigating what’s up with b3 on a patched system and will compare it with a supported Mac as well.

Furthermore, I may just make the tool available on a boot disk to make it simple and right now it has almost no limitations.

Is this for asr in Catalina or an earlier release? I don't believe Apple ever said that the support for firm links and the associated Data volumes would be backported to earlier macOS releases.

 

[jackluke]

Here's the latest fix for light mode in Catalina (except top menubar, ask @pkouame/@jackluke for it). You need @ASentienBot's patch to make this work.
Just replace this binary with the one in /S*/L*/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/SkyLightOriginal
(Should work on every version of Catalina, regardless of the version: beta1, beta2, beta3, even later betas...)

I used your binary patch method also on a Mojave 10.14.5 Skylight and it worked (except only the finder top-menu in light mode), I guess SkyLightOriginal is essentially the stock 10.14.5 Skylight, I think @ASentientBot has developed the SkyLight wrapper leaving untouched the mojave "SkyLight(Original)".

 

[jhowarth]

Well I'm going to pitch in my experience:

I made the installer on a external USB 750gb hard drive,

A have a Mac mini from 2009, 2.26ghz with 8gb of ram and with a 120 SSD, it is not APFS ROM patched,

First the installation froze because I formatted the hard drive in HFS thinking during the installation it would automatically convert to APFS, but apparently it doesn't do that on it's own.

So after I waited a while and figured out it froze, I restarted the installation from scratch, only this time I formatted the hard drive immediately to APFS,

So it eventually went thru, once it install booted again from drive, it patched everything needed to be patched, had to choose dark mode, because light mode is just weird, the patcher updater prompted me to install the broadcom update, because 2 years ago I updated my wifi and bluetooth card, but after it restarted I still don't have wifi, so there is a glitch here

I noticed compared to previous versions of macOS, this one does take a lot more time to install, don't know if it's because of being in beta or not,

So my thoughts are: The system is usable no doubt and I congratulate everybody's efforts on this, but it isn't the most smooth experience in the world mostly due to the graphics I believe, it takes a while to load up windows and system animations, etc.

I think High Sierra is for this system in particular the most smooth, It's not Mavericks smooth but hey, that's never ever going to get that good, as for me personally Mavericks was the best performance wise ( not booting up, but system performance was awesome, talking about more recent stuff, because Snow Leopard was also a beast ).

Anyway, hope along the way macOS Catalina gets a little more snappier on this older machines! This is still without question a huge achievement !!!

The Catalina Patcher currently behaves like the earlier Mojave and High Sierra patchers in disabling the automatic conversion of HFS volumes. Considering that Catalina requires APFS and that the patcher now auto-installs the APFS patch, it might be worthwhile to enable the APFS conversion unless there are some ROM dependencies for it to work.
[doublepost=1563191734][/doublepost]

Just released another update to Catalina Patcher. This version now includes an option to prevent automatic installation of the software APFS booter, and fixes an issue where the kextcache may not get rebuilt when post-install patches are applied automatically.

View attachment 848189

Since Catalina now requires APFS volumes and you have the APFS patch auto-installed on request now, would it be feasible to no longer disable the auto-conversion of target HFS volumes to APFS?

 

[echophilon]

Mac Pro 5.1 updated with dosdude1 patcher over Mojave, and stock wifi was working ootb. Yesterday I installed cat beta with the then latest patch (applied) on a blank drive. Everything is working fine so far apart from Wifi. I patched it again in case I forgot something but, no, no avail. The card is okay as it works here on mojave. Any ideas? Thank you!

 

[webg3]

Any way to run Photos on macOS Catalina (MacBook Pro 7,1) ?

 

[TimothyR734]

Any way to run Photos on macOS Catalina (MacBook Pro 7,1) ?

Hopefully in a future beta from what I have been reading even those with supported Macs are having issues with photo's iCloud Drive, iCloud and syncing

 

[dosdude1]

Mac Pro 5.1 updated with dosdude1 patcher over Mojave, and stock wifi was working ootb. Yesterday I installed cat beta with the then latest patch (applied) on a blank drive. Everything is working fine so far apart from Wifi. I patched it again in case I forgot something but, no, no avail. The card is okay as it works here on mojave. Any ideas? Thank you!

Try installing the Legacy WiFi patch, if it wasn't installed by default. Make sure you force cache rebuild before rebooting, and then see if it works.

 

[echophilon]

Try installing the Legacy WiFi patch, if it wasn't installed by default. Make sure you force cache rebuild before rebooting, and then see if it works.

Thank you! I've done that already legacy patch + cache rebuild. I'm just preparing your latest (today) patch and will try again. BTW, is it necessary to load the full beta on a usb stick every time to apply just the patch? Thanks

 

[NiloGlock]

Hi, thank you very much for your work.

When I select the disk, the installer stucks about in the middle of the progress bar with "3 minutes
remaining", both with b9 and with b10. If you need the log I'll send it to you.

Have a nice day and thanks again!

Here is the installation log:

 

[TimothyR734]

Thank you! I've done that already legacy patch + cache rebuild. I'm just preparing your latest (today) patch and will try again. BTW, is it necessary to load the full beta on a usb stick every time to apply just the patch? Thanks

No the only time you have to make a new macOS Catalina Patcher is when a new beta comes out

 

[kral84]

Just released another update to Catalina Patcher. This version now includes an option to prevent automatic installation of the software APFS booter, and fixes an issue where the kextcache may not get rebuilt when post-install patches are applied automatically.

View attachment 848189

how can i update the patch or must i install catalina with your new patcher new? i use 1.0b4 … your patcher say is up to date…

 

[NiloGlock]

how can i update the patch or must i install catalina with your new patcher new? i use 1.0b4 … your patcher say is up to date…

This is the current version.

 

[TimothyR734]

Here is the installation log:

Are you trying to install macOS Catalina and have you tried resetting your PRAM Command-Option-P and R then boot into the patcher
[doublepost=1563206592][/doublepost]

how can i update the patch or must i install catalina with your new patcher new? i use 1.0b4 … your patcher say is up to date…

the b4 patcher is out of date and won't work with future beta's download the new copy of the latest b10 then if you haven't downloaded the latest beta which is dev beta 3 then create a new patcher if you have dev beta installed already boot into the patcher and apply the post install patches

 

[Althiometer]

How can we update to pb2 of Catalina
Is it from a USB drive with pb2 installer or with software update?

 

[NiloGlock]

Are you trying to install macOS Catalina and have you tried resetting your PRAM Command-Option-P and R then boot into the patcher

Reset done. Same situation.

 

[echophilon]

No the only time you have to make a new macOS Catalina Patcher is when a new beta comes out

Thanks. I just tried the new patch as suggested (legacy wifi + force rebuild). No success. The stock wifi card doesn't work anymore. Was working with patch 07. A dull question, please: how to apply a new patch without creating the bootable full usb (patch asks for a copy of cat beta). Thanks

 

[dosdude1]

Thanks. I just tried the new patch as suggested (legacy wifi + force rebuild). No success. The stock wifi card doesn't work anymore. Was working with patch 07. A dull question, please: how to apply a new patch without creating the bootable full usb (patch asks for a copy of cat beta). Thanks

What WiFi card is it? Check under WiFi in System Profiler when running Mojave.

 

[TimothyR734]

Reset done. Same situation.

Do you have another Mac to try making a new patcher and is your usb drive 16gb

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Thanks. I just tried the new patch as suggested (legacy wifi + force rebuild). No success. The stock wifi card doesn't work anymore. Was working with patch 07. A dull question, please: how to apply a new patch without creating the bootable full usb (patch asks for a copy of cat beta). Thanks

If you have one of the newer Apple LTE 4.0/802.11 ac modules, they used to work out of the box in previous iterations of macOS, but after Sierra they began to need the use of the Continuity Activation Tool for full functionality. The odd thing is that if you update, say, from High Sierra with a working LTE 4.0/Wi-Fi to Mojave, Continuity will work flawlessly after the update, but if you were to install Mojave from scratch, you would require CAT once again. So, my prediction is that if you update your current Mojave machine to Catalina, Continuity should go on working, but you'll require CAT if you install Catalina from scratch.

 

[bbfc]

It was a simple script I written using the @pkouame hybrid patches (HIToolBox and CoreUI), but consider that it was exclusively for Mojave, it won't work on Catalina, on Catalina there is the new @testheit "SkyLight hybrid patch" that will (work on Mojave too) fix all the glitched-grey "light mode" elements except the Finder-top-menu that could be fixed using a Catalina HIToolBox patched making it flat white / black with no transparency, while the other transparencies on dock, notification center, "left-pane in-app tabs" are still kept.

I tried it but everytime I tried to copy the files over Finder would freeze on the copy dialog box and I couldn’t get it to complete. So I gave up as it happened every single time.

 

[NiloGlock]

Do you have another Mac to try making a new patcher and is your usb drive 16gb

No, this is the only Intel Mac I have. The partition is actually 12 GB, I can try to enlarge it to 16 GB.

 

[TimothyR734]

I tried it but everytime I tried to copy the files over Finder would freeze on the copy dialog box and I couldn’t get it to complete. So I gave up as it happened every single time.

Try running this is the terminal the try to replace the Skylight patch
[doublepost=1563211234][/doublepost]

No, this is the only Intel Mac I have. The partition is actually 12 GB, I can try to enlarge it to 16 GB.

It is recommended 16

 

[echophilon]

If you have one of the newer Apple LTE 4.0/802.11 ac modules,

Hello, no, it's a stock cMP 5.1, 2012 with native Mojave. And when I installed catalina with b07 patch over mojave, the stock wifi card was working flawlessly. Installed on a blank drive (b09 / b10), default patch applied, wifi is not working anymore. Bluetooth is ok.