macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

[quaccOS]

• Has anyone found a workaround for the unreponsive Safari Extensions tickboxes bug since 10.15.3?
Safari > Preferences ⌘, > Extensions > Tickboxes (on left) – will not enable upon clicking

• Japanese and Chinese Input Sources/Methods alike fail to convert letters to characters – usually freezing entirely, since Catalina's release. My only workaround is booting into a small Mojave partition to type documents, and then transfer to Catalina.
Is there any fix found for this?
System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > + > Japanese or Chinese (Pinyin - Simplified)

• AirDrop is gone – I've been using Telegram messenger to send files from macOS ⟷ iOS. AirDrop isn't essential, but it is missed.

• Software Update pane reads "Your Mac is up to date" regardless if updates are available. I'm sure many are having this issue though – you can always download a new installer app with a Mojave partition or dosdude1's patcher

macOS 10.15.4 (19E266), Patcher 1.4.3
MacBookPro 7,1: 13" Mid-2010, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, 8GB DDR3, 240GB SSD

Useful Links:
– Zoom 4.5.9 is the last version that supports non-Metal GPUs – later versions give a black screen
You might need to remove these sometimes…not sure why ⬇︎
rm -r /Applications/zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/ZoomOpener.app; rm -r ~/.zoomus
– Google's Japanese IME is a usable alternative for those who are on patched Catalina, just click MACばんをダウンロード (Download Mac Version) on the centre of the page.
– macOS Downloads Catalog is useful when certain offline voices just won't download (e.g. Siri Irish Male)
– AirParrot 1 in case you need AirPlay on a pre-2011 Mac (free for 7 days, then re-download)
– Reflector 1 to AirPlay an iOS device to your Mac (free for 7 days, then re-download)
– Windows 7 Ultimate x64 or Windows 7 Home Premium x64 direct ISO download links from Microsoft in case you need it for Bootcamp

 

[Syncretic]

My test setup: MP3,1 / Catalina 10.15.4 (19E266)

• Has anyone found a workaround for the unreponsive Safari Extensions tickboxes bug since 10.15.3?
Safari > Preferences ⌘, > Extensions > Tickboxes (on left) – will not enable upon clicking

I only have two extensions installed - AdGuard and WhatFont - but both allow me to enable/disable them from the Safari Preference Pane (ticking/unticking the checkboxes you describe).

• Japanese and Chinese Input Sources/Methods alike fail to convert letters to characters – usually freezing entirely, since Catalina's release. My only workaround is booting into a small Mojave partition to type documents, and then transfer to Catalina.
Is there any fix found for this?
System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > + > Japanese or Chinese (Pinyin - Simplified)

This is a known problem that is only going to get worse over time. The library used by the input processing code now uses AVX+ instructions, which are not supported on older Mac Pros (MP3,1/4,1/5,1 have no AVX+ support at all, MP6,1 supports AVX but not AVX2/AVX-512). Currently, the only Mac Pro with full AVX+ support is MP7,1.
In this post, I note that Apple has started using more SSE4.2/AVX+ instructions in their OS code, meaning that with each successive MacOS update, more functionality will be lost on the older systems. We are probably not far from the last MacOS release that will ever run on cMP systems.

 

[Jforte]

well....I have some very TINY issues, The first one is you need to install all apps that have extensions and make sure that they are ACTIVATED before patching! (as I believe this issue is still open (unable to activate extensions on a patched version of Catalina) The second thing I found out is in photos when you display a photo the picture obscures (I believe that this issue has a fix I just don't know it) and in photos you I do not have a sidebar selection for all.

Messages works well, FaceTime (not sure I have not tested it) App Store works well, Reminders, iCloud, Apple TV all good for me

good luck

Keep in mind that if you have a non metal card (like stock) or a graphic card with metal support (look for iMac graphic card update) is relevant for some apps like Apple TV+...

 

[jackluke]

Does anyone noticed that Music.app crashed without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" or it's only a 10.15.5 beta 2 requirement?

I mean those who are on 10.15.4 without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" (using only the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist), can open Music.app without issues ?

To check if you have that amfi string, simply open Catalina terminal: nvram boot-args

 

[TimothyR734]

Does anyone noticed that Music.app crashed without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" or it's only a 10.15.5 beta 2 requirement?

I mean those who are on 10.15.4 without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" (using only the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist), can open Music.app without issues ?

To check if you have that amfi string, simply open Catalina terminal: nvram boot-args

When you open your music app does an error report pop-up with out the amfi_get_out_of_my_way in the boot-args and did you try running sudo killall taskgated in the terminal

 

[telepati]

• Has anyone found a workaround for the unreponsive Safari Extensions tickboxes bug since 10.15.3?
Safari > Preferences ⌘, > Extensions > Tickboxes (on left) – will not enable upon clicking

Mine is doesn't work either. There are two tricks I tried from the web but that doesn't work for me.

1. Open macOS in SafeMode try to activate extension from there.
2. Open Safari preferences, first go to the Extension section then switch to the Security. Then close the Safari while preferences open on the security section. Open Safari again and go to the Extension section and try to activate Extension.

These both method doesn't work for me. Just try maybe works for you.

 

[Syncretic]

I may have just stumbled upon something interesting. Catalina 10.15.4 (19E266) appears to be able to run on a MP3,1 with an AMD RX570 without using SSE 4.2 emulation. The AMDMTLBronzeDriver.bundle still contains a PCMPGTQ instruction, but despite running different benchmarks, I couldn't trigger it. The beta MouSSE stats counter shows zero SSE4.2 instructions parsed. (I have mostly been testing on a different disk with an earlier Catalina, which definitely does use SSE4.2.)

Could someone with a MP3,1 who's running Catalina 10.15.4 (19E266) (or perhaps later?) and an AMD video card please try to confirm? (I do so much tinkering with my system that it wouldn't be shocking to find I've just overlooked something, and this "finding" is really nothing at all.)

 

[hvds]

Does anyone noticed that Music.app crashed without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" or it's only a 10.15.5 beta 2 requirement?

I mean those who are on 10.15.4 without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" (using only the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist), can open Music.app without issues ?

To check if you have that amfi string, simply open Catalina terminal: nvram boot-args

Just tried (10.15.5b2 installed OTA with 1.4.3 post-install). nvram has no boot-args. -> Music.app works well.
Same with 10.15.4 with 1.4.3 post-install.

Counter test with nvram boot-args -no_compat_check amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1 (as is there after booting with OpenCore EFI). -> Music.app works also.
Seems I'm lucky with these apps; also 3rd party like MS Word, Affinity Photo work for me with and without the amfi in boot-args (Zoom, Chrome I don't have or use).

Side remark: when booting directly (to startup disk or to this disk from opt/alt boot selector), boot-args gets removed from nvram.

 

[thebluecoat]

Could I get some guidance or advisement on installing Catalina on Late 2011 MBP 13” 8,1.

Currently it’s running 10.9.5 Mavericks. I want to upgrade the HDD to SSD (coming today) and do a fresh install via Catalina patcher onto bootable usb.

is it possible simply create the bootable usb and do a fresh install? I keep reading about the different file systems and bios stuff as well.

what would be the steps to go from 10.9.5 to catalina if you have a brand new blank ssd you’re installing. Thank you.

 

[jackluke]

Just tried (10.15.5b2 installed OTA with 1.4.3 post-install). nvram has no boot-args. -> Music.app works well.
Same with 10.15.4 with 1.4.3 post-install.

Counter test with nvram boot-args -no_compat_check amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1 (as is there after booting with OpenCore EFI). -> Music.app works also.
Seems I'm lucky with these apps; also 3rd party like MS Word, Affinity Photo work for me with and without the amfi in boot-args (Zoom, Chrome I don't have or use).

Side remark: when booting directly (to startup disk or to this disk from opt/alt boot selector), boot-args gets removed from nvram.

I guess only difference at this point is that I am using a stock 10.15.5 boot.efi , I should try the patched one then.

edit:
Just noticed that I had DisableLibraryValidation.kext (in kextcache), removed and even with opencore 10.15.5 stock boot.efi Music.app works without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" using only ASentientBot com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist .

 

[109mmk27]

Does 10.15.5 works with the latest dosdude patcher?

 

[TimothyR734]

Could I get some guidance or advisement on installing Catalina on Late 2011 MBP 13” 8,1.

Currently it’s running 10.9.5 Mavericks. I want to upgrade the HDD to SSD (coming today) and do a fresh install via Catalina patcher onto bootable usb.

is it possible simply create the bootable usb and do a fresh install? I keep reading about the different file systems and bios stuff as well.

what would be the steps to go from 10.9.5 to catalina if you have a brand new blank ssd you’re installing. Thank you.

Personally I would install macOS Mojave as it still support 32 bit apps, and HFS-Extended Journaled. MacOS Catalina requires APFS9I know there are some who have got it to work on HFS). In order you use APFS you have you use the APFS Boot rom Patcher which is very risky you pick the wrong boot-rom as there are 3 choices you could brick your iMac 8,1 that is what happened to mine but I was successful with APFS boot-rom Patcher on my iMac 9,1 and Macbook 5,2

 

[Project Alice]

Trying to update my 5,1 to the 10.15.4 supplemental update. Fresh downloaded installer and patcher. Guess I’ll redownload everything and do it again.

 

[avz]

Could I get some guidance or advisement on installing Catalina on Late 2011 MBP 13” 8,1.

Currently it’s running 10.9.5 Mavericks. I want to upgrade the HDD to SSD (coming today) and do a fresh install via Catalina patcher onto bootable usb.

is it possible simply create the bootable usb and do a fresh install? I keep reading about the different file systems and bios stuff as well.

what would be the steps to go from 10.9.5 to catalina if you have a brand new blank ssd you’re installing. Thank you.

1. Install macOS High Sierra with the latest Security Update(this will update your firmware).
2. Install Catalina.

 

[quaccOS]

I only have two extensions installed - AdGuard and WhatFont - but both allow me to enable/disable them from the Safari Preference Pane (ticking/unticking the checkboxes you describe).

I've had 1Blocker installed since the discontinuation of the Safari Extensions Gallery in September '19, and the release of Safari 13 which meant a lot of developers had to convert their old .safariextz files to the new Safari App Extension format
1Blocker was one of the first ad-blockers advertised on the Mac App Store's Safari Extensions story. I like that it uses iCloud Sync so my iPhone & Mac have the same custom rules – never had any problems until 10.15.3 came along
It was a once-off €9.99 app, now a freemium subscription for new users. I only use it because I purchased it before that, and now have all the same premium features except frequent rule updates via cloud service – that's why I haven't changed to a different ad-blocker (I hate subscriptions or "freemium" things in general)

There are two tricks I tried from the web but that doesn't work for me.
1. Open macOS in Safe Mode try to activate extension from there.
2. Open Safari preferences, first go to the Extension section then switch to the Security. Then close the Safari while preferences open on the security section. Open Safari again and go to the Extension section and try to activate Extension…

1. Holding Shift ⇧ while booting up gives a white screen with the prohibitory circle-backslash symbol in the centre – so I think Safe Mode is not working. I think it's something got to do with the SIP's kext signing mechanism rejecting the patcher 'to protect itself' – I'm not entirely sure


2. I tried exiting, restarting Safari, changing between Safari Preferences panes – and I did notice the Extensions pane would refresh (flicker to a blank grey, then show the list again). Unfortunately, those checkboxes just won't enable. They'll turn a darker grey upon clicking, but that's it.

Japanese and Chinese Input Sources/Methods alike fail to convert letters to characters – usually freezing entirely, since Catalina's release. My only workaround is booting into a small Mojave partition to type documents, and then transfer to Catalina. Is there any fix found for this?
System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > + > Japanese or Chinese (Pinyin - Simplified)
macOS 10.15.4 (19E266), Patcher 1.4.3
MacBookPro 7,1: 13" Mid-2010, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, 8GB DDR3, 240GB SSD

This is a known problem that is only going to get worse over time. The library used by the input processing code now uses AVX+ instructions, which are not supported on older Mac Pros (MP3,1/4,1/5,1 have no AVX+ support at all, MP6,1 supports AVX but not AVX2/AVX-512). Currently, the only Mac Pro with full AVX+ support is MP7,1.
In this post, I note that Apple has started using more SSE4.2/AVX+ instructions in their OS code, meaning that with each successive MacOS update, more functionality will be lost on the older systems. We are probably not far from the last MacOS release that will ever run on cMP systems.

I don't fully understand what AVX instructions are – I think it's related to the CPU's assembly language code (low level stuff). I don't have a Mac Pro (only MacBook Pro 7,1) but I partially understand, like how  Apple required Metal-capable GPUs for Mojave and deprecated the OpenGL API. Our old computers will be less & less capable of keeping up with new & more efficient instructions to our processing units (that's the idea I get so far)

I think someone said way back in this thread that Japanese input will only work on Sandy Bridge or later processors (2011 or later) – so you're onto something, which also means we'll never have any more Input Methods that require conversion of Latin keyboard input to foreign logographs (especially Chinese, Japanese, Korean Hanja etc).

 

[Project Alice]

Trying to update my 5,1 to the 10.15.4 supplemental update. Fresh downloaded installer and patcher. Guess I’ll redownload everything and do it again.
View attachment 907754

Tried again three times. Same error. Other than trying another USB drive I’ve got nothing.

 

[TimothyR734]

Tried again three times. Same error. Other than trying another USB drive I’ve got nothing.

Try a different usb port or you could try this https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....2183772/page-404?post=28358444#post-28358444 a 512mb usb would suffice you could also use it to reset your nvram(PRAM) after you create one boot into it then in the menu list choose your macOS Catalina Patcher

 

[Project Alice]

Try a different usb port or you could try this https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....2183772/page-404?post=28358444#post-28358444 a 512mb usb would suffice you could also use it to reset your nvram(PRAM) after you create one boot into it then in the menu list choose your macOS Catalina Patcher

Tried a different drive and a different port. Still the same error.
I've never had to do anything before besides create the patched installer and boot from it. I don't have opencore installed and I've never used it before, but if you think it'll fix this error I can try it.

 

[TimothyR734]

Tried a different drive and a different port. Still the same error.

I've never had to do anything before besides create the patched installer and boot from it. I don't have opencore installed and I've never used it before, but if you think it'll fix this error I can try it.

if you have a spare usb to boot that is what it makes

 

[quaccOS]

Japanese and Chinese Input Sources/Methods alike fail to convert letters to characters – usually freezing entirely, since Catalina's release. My only workaround is booting into a small Mojave partition to type documents, and then transfer to Catalina.
Is there any fix found for this?
System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > + > Japanese or Chinese (Pinyin - Simplified)

macOS 10.15.4 (19E266), Patcher 1.4.3
MacBookPro 7,1: 13" Mid-2010, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, 8GB DDR3, 240GB SSD

I think someone said way back in this thread that Japanese input will only work on Sandy Bridge or later processors (2011 or later) – so you're onto something, which also means we'll never have any more Input Methods that require conversion of Latin keyboard input to foreign logographs (especially Chinese, Japanese, Korean Hanja etc).

@Minh_Ton

Following @ASentientBot's post, I got the Japanese Input Method partially working by replacing these files from Mojave:

/usr/lib/libmecabra.dylib
/System/Library/Input Methods/JapaneseIM.app
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TextInput.framework

Just by replacing those file, the Japanese IM worked, however after messing around with it a little bit I am still seeing some strange symbols popping up following by a crash of the JapaneseIM.... But I can still type some simple sentences in Japanese without any problems. Yay!

---------------

Edit: Got the JapaneseIM fully working by replacing one more framework (With no more crashing or "おはよ４"):

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TextInputCore.framework

Hopefully this will help to fix the problems that Japanese people on unsupported Macs are encountering. Good night!
View attachment 897589

I think you are the only person who has come close to fixing the Japanese input source on patched Catalina. I have difficulty following what you did, but if you have any additional info on how to fix it – please don't hesitate to post

 

[garirry]

I decided to try out Catalina just for the fun of it on my MacBook 5,2 but after making a bootable USB drive, I can't get to boot into the installer, it just hangs there on the Apple logo screen. If I start in verbose mode, there's some message that loops (I don't remember what it was). I also tried disabling SIP but that didn't do anything.

Is there something I'm missing here?

EDIT: Looks like the installer I used was bad. Downloading the installer using the assistant seemed to do the trick.

 

[toyosup88]

So i need some help. I used bootcamp to install windows 10 on my MacBook pro 5,5 mid-2009 and now I can't boot back to Catalina. I'm stuck in windows 10 cause it doesn't recognize the apfs volume apparently. Tried the bootcamp app in windows and it doesn't show up. Neither does holding option at boot. What do I do now?

 

[techguy82]

So i need some help. I used bootcamp to install windows 10 on my MacBook pro 5,5 mid-2009 and now I can't boot back to Catalina. I'm stuck in windows 10 cause it doesn't recognize the apfs volume apparently. Tried the bootcamp app in windows and it doesn't show up. Neither does holding option at boot. What do I do now?

This is just an idea. Maybe you can run the Catalina installer from USB or start up in recovery mode with CMD+R and from there you can set the start-up disk.

 

[hvds]

I guess only difference at this point is that I am using a stock 10.15.5 boot.efi , I should try the patched one then.

edit:
Just noticed that I had DisableLibraryValidation.kext (in kextcache), removed and even with opencore 10.15.5 stock boot.efi Music.app works without "amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" using only ASentientBot com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist .

Good that you found it.
Just verified on my MBP5,2 that I have these "standard" settings from 1.4.3 patcher
(dyld cache redone always, and other cache redo forced):
- Kernel Flags of com.apple.Boot.plist is only -no_compat_check in both places
- there is no DisableLibraryValidation.kext in /S/L/E
- DisableLibraryValidation of com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist is YES
- boot-args of nvram is not there,
-- it is there after booting via OC, with value -no_compat_check amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1, and all fine as well; is gone again after booting directly.

Edit:
just to add, I never had major problems with any of the patched systems, maybe with the expection of Mojave 10.14.4. Catalina is very stable and performant for me, but as I said, my MBP5,2 is an old-fashioned workhorse and barely used for demanding media applications.

Thanks to dosdude, ASentientBot, jackluke and all who helped overcome the (growing) hurdles of newest macOS versions on our unsupported machines.
Also I find that OpenCore adds welcome extra flexibility and redundancy - I couldn't have OTA installation to an external disk without it.

As others, I think that for unsupported systems, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to have a bootable USB installer at hand, possibly also keeping one from the previous proven macOS version. Plus an OpenCore loader also on (maybe the same) USB medium, made with USBOpenCoreAPFSloader. That's a small price to pay for continued use of the latest macOS.

 

[dosdude1]

Tried again three times. Same error. Other than trying another USB drive I’ve got nothing.

Verify that you're using the latest 1.4.3 release of Catalina Patcher. 10.15.4 installers will not work with older versions.