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macOS 14 Sonoma on Unsupported Macs Thread

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
RogueB said:
Hello to All,

MacBook Pro 5,2 (mid 2009) report

Successful installation of Sonoma Beta 2 via a USB Thumb drive, and subsequent attempt to install Sonoma Beta3 via OTA method.

USB thumb drive contained previously created Sonoma Beta2 installer , however, I mounted its EFI partition, deleted the contents within, and used latest OCLP 1.1n from 10.15.23 to install new EFI. Laptop was connected to internet via Ethernet port, which remains active, unlike WiFi, throughout the process.

Latest OCLP now “requires” that external keyboard and mouse be attached to the computer USB port, via an external hub, from the beginning of the boot process into the thumb drive which has Sonoma installer. Icons representing keyboard and mouse flash on black screen until external hub, with both items attached, is plugged into USB port of the laptop. Previously the external hub solution (credit HVDS) was needed only after installation of the OS, in order to log into the new installation and apply OCLP patches. Once external USB hub setup was completed, the Thumb drive booted into standard recovery partition and allowed selection of Sonoma Beta2 to install onto internal disk. Installation took some time, with short periods of time where it appeared to stall, but in fact was parsing through installation files and continued in short order. On completion of the installation process I was able to log into Beta2 and successfully apply patches. Note: during patching process OCLP automatically downloaded latest KDK from Apple and integrated it in the patching process. Hence, importance of Ethernet connection during patching process.

Sonoma 14.1 beta#3 OTA install:

I tried to install Beta3 via OTA method (there is no full installer available). That installation seemed to proceed fine, and completed through multiple reboots, but on final reboot installation stalled with screen showing folder and blinking question mark; a sure sign of boot disk (EFI?) corruption. This was reminiscent of another time (Monterey installation) where same problem occurred. Diskutil list showed fractured container system, but viable pre-boot partitions.

Recovery:

Re-Installed Catalina via Dosdude1’s patcher, which is not reliant on the OCLP. Catalina was fully re-installed onto its old partition (the latter was still visible in recovery mode while booted into Catalina Install thumb drive). Installation process itself went well, as did subsequent patching. Next step was to download OCLP patcher; newest available on 10.15.23 (OCLP 1.1 n). Once downloaded, I was able to build and install OCLP onto the internal disk. This process replaced EFI content, which appeared to be corrupted. On reboot all partitions and OS installations, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma 14.1 beta2 and Catalina were accessible and fully functional. There was no data loss on any of the partitions. OCLP Patching process went without issues. I keep Catalina on the MacBook Pro 5,2 because it does not need OCLP for installation, and as evidenced above, is an immeasurable help in recovering from EFI misadventures. Catalina is also (currently) the only OS X iteration which allows direct content streaming, e.g. via Apple TV, on non-metal machines(?)

Hope this may be of help to someone in similar circumstances; consider recovery process before formatting the whole drive.

Thank you to the developers for constantly evolving the OCLP.
There may be a new OCLP 1.1n version(s), which may alleviate or prevent Beta3 install problems noted above.

P.S. There were no issues installing Sonoma 14.1 betas 1-3 on iMac 13,2.
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Hello RogueB,

thank you for the report. Useful for me as our machines are very similar (maybe not completely, since I have installed an APFS-related firmware change once provided by dosdude1).
I have four remarks:

I need the hub-connected external keyboard and mouse since longer (since Ventura actually) when booting a USB installer. When doing an OTA update of MacOS, I need it only later when the login screen first appears, probably because no input is required before that.

I remember your report from Monterey OTA upgrade. I think I had something similar with Sonoma. It seems installation from USB can do less harm than OTA.

However recovery was easier in my case. If it is mainly the EFI which is bad, could you generate a new one (maybe on a separate USB medium) on a different machine selecting the proper target machine in OCLP settings? Worth a try, though in my case more things were corrupted. But it happened only once, the other OTA updates went well.

Indeed as davidlv says, 14.1b3 is available in OCLP, and also via gibMacOS. I'll make a USB installer from it as an up-to-date fallback point.
 
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So, after following the conversation for a bit, is there any reason to switch to the nightlies for 14.0 on a later iMac such as a late 2015, vs older macs, or are the fixes mainly for 14.1, or older macs? Not having any issues, so mainly asking out of curiosity to see if I would benefit by updating before the final release as I did with 0.68 to 0.69n.
 
The changeling is not showing any interesting change for these machines (if I am not wrong).
Sonoma 14.1 is not bringing any new ground breaking feature.
For now, I don't see the point upgrading to a beta OS with a beta patcher on this unsupported hardware.
We still have to do with the known regressions on this kind of hardware (Skylake + R9 GPU):
  • DRM Safari for disney+ and other video platforms (Ventura + Sonoma)
  • VMWare guests with 3D acceleration (Ventura + Sonoma)
  • Debug on real device in Xcode (Ventura + Sonoma)
  • Green artifacts in some video Thumbnails in Photos.app, finder (Sonoma only)
 
rbart said:
The changeling is not showing any interesting change for these machines (if I am not wrong).
Sonoma 14.1 is not bringing any new ground breaking feature.
For now, I don't see the point upgrading to a beta OS with a beta patcher on this unsupported hardware.
We still have to do with the known regressions on this kind of hardware (Skylake + R9 GPU):
  • DRM Safari for disney+ and other video platforms (Ventura + Sonoma)
  • VMWare guests with 3D acceleration (Ventura + Sonoma)
  • Debug on real device in Xcode (Ventura + Sonoma)
  • Green artifacts in some video Thumbnails in Photos.app, finder (Sonoma only)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info. I just thought of something today many people here may not think about. How is Home support on a patched Mac. I decided to look at my HomeKit setup through the mac instead of my phone today as having it on a larger screen with a mouse and keyboard control is a bit nicer over a touch screen. Everything seemed fine, so I'm guessing I won't have any problems. I did the home upgrades so can no longer use home from Monterey. It's iOS 16, and Ventura or newer now. I don't have a lot of Homekit compatible accessories right now as I started with Alex, and then also got Google Home because both were much better than Apple when I wanted to explore smart home stuff. So most of the stuff I invested in works well, but isn't HomeKit compatible. With that said, I am getting more devices slowly that are, and some of my lights have been updated to work with Matter, which works in HomeKit.

I'll hold off on upgrading until things are released publicly as I tend not to do betas.
 
MacinMan said:
How is Home support on a patched Mac. I decided to look at my HomeKit setup through the mac instead of my phone today as having it on a larger screen with a mouse and keyboard control is a bit nicer over a touch screen.
Click to expand...
Big HK user here. No issues in Sonoma 17.1b3 OCLP that I am aware of with latest iOS, TV OS, FWIW.
The Home App on Sonoma has mainly cosmetic changes. Nice IMHO.
 
houser said:
Big HK user here. No issues in Sonoma 17.1b3 OCLP that I am aware of with latest iOS, TV OS, FWIW.
The Home App on Sonoma has mainly cosmetic changes. Nice IMHO.
Click to expand...
OK, maybe you can help me with something. My main source of Smart Lights is Wiz, works fine on the phone, but the widget for Wiz won't populate on the mac running Sonoma, is this an open core problem, or is this a wiz issue? They don't have a mac native widget so it's using the feature to pull form my phone.
 
Sorry, never used Wiz, but I have a Node Red and Home Assistant server that I can convert and make most stuff appear in HK. I would venture to guess that what you want can be done with any of those if you need it.
Or wait and badger Wiz for a working or 3d partywidget. Still early days with Sonoma Widgets so many catching up probably. Good luck.
 
MacinMan said:
OK, maybe you can help me with something. My main source of Smart Lights is Wiz, works fine on the phone, but the widget for Wiz won't populate on the mac running Sonoma, is this an open core problem, or is this a wiz issue? They don't have a mac native widget so it's using the feature to pull form my phone.
Click to expand...
May be HomeBridge (an open source software) can help. It can install plugin to make unsupported hardware controlled by macOS Home apps.

I use this to control all my SwitchBot stuff. It works perfectly. I can even turn on my PS5 via the playstation plugin.
 
For those who track OCLP changes down to the Kext version level, a fairly recent OCLP commit includes AirportBrcmFixup.kext 2.1.8 (now part of OCLP 1.1.0, thanks for the heads-up @K two ). With the use of this kext, AirportBrcmFixup.kext no longer needs a "beta" boot-arg in OC's config.plist.

EDIT: Those who use OCLP without "looking under the hood" don't need to be concerned with this. This is handled for you automatically by OCLP.
 
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K two said:
For those interested - macOS 3.6.1RC and 14.1RC are available.🥳
Click to expand...
... and macOS Monterey 12.7.1

Apple just released an update for Big Sur (which was released in 2020) which implies 3 years of released updates from Apple for each version of macOS. If Apple releases only one more Intel-Mac compatible macOS next year, that means Apple support of Intel Macs for almost 4 more years (maybe more). That's a long life expectancy for OCLP, too! :)

EDIT: Maybe someone who's better at math can check my logic.

macOS-Future.jpg
 
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deeveedee said:
I haven't looked. The last Big Sur update I saw just recently (Sept. 11, 2023) was 11.7.10. Wouldn't surprise me if that was the last for Big Sur, but I never say 'never.'
Click to expand...
I was responding to your post where you said "Apple Just released an update for Big Sur" which implies there was newer. If you were referring to 11.7.10 apologizes, just wanted to make sure.

The other question I have is, is Monterey 12.7.1, RC like the others, or is it public? If it's public I need to reboot and update.
 
as above 14.1 rc went without issues reverting patches about 760mb , latest OCLP 1.1n restoring the MacBooks camera for FaceTime as well . All running solid Thanks to Devs who keep pushing to fix everything they can to work as normal.
 
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Bluetooth doesn't seem to be working on my iMac 9,1. Don't know why, I've reapplied patches maybe 10 times now.
Also it seems like the Photos app crashes on non Metal. No mention of it anywhere in the known issues but it has been the case with two non metal macs I've tried.
 
Just updated my tester machine MacBookPro14,3 (15" 2017 touchBar) to the OCLP 1.1 nightly... and as everyone has said - Touch ID and Apple Watch unlock working again! These devs are amazing. (I also am still on 14.0 (23A344) - I didn't know if you needed to update to 14.1 Beta to get OCLP 1.1 working, but it seems not!)
 
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Using 1.0.1 I decided to wipe my late-2013 15" MBP and see what I could do with it.

I did an internet recovery first just to make sure it was all working*, and it put Mavericks on. Booted - all good. Then I created a Sonoma install using OCLP 1.0.1, booted from that USB disk, then used diskutil to zap the internal SSD and create an APFS container thing.

Install went ok, upgraded to the latest beta (well, the one just before today's release), and restored using Migration Assistant from my time machine network drive. Perfect. Just upgraded to today's 14.1 RC beta.

Had an issue with the EFI partition, maybe because I had Ubuntu on this system before doing the complete wipe - don't know. I could boot from my USB disk but not directly. Had to mount the EFI partition, remove everything (rm -fr commands in the terminal in /Volumes/EFI) then run the OpenCore app to rebuild the EFI partition. All working perfectly now!

* The screen is smashed, so I've disconnected it and use the macbook connected via HDMI to a monitor.
 
Squash019 said:
Hi! Is anyone having issues opening Chrome/Chromium-based apps? I could only open Chrome by disabling GPU acceleration through command line, but can’t seem to make other apps work (Edge, Teams opens but won’t show the chats content, Excel). Even “atuin” in the terminal is not working well… I can’t seem to find a real common point…
Click to expand...
Installing Sonoma 14.1beta and reinstalling the problematic apps seems to have solved the problem o_O
 
Got a late 2014 MacMini [7.1] - was running Monterey 12.7 Monday morning. But later that day I discovered OCLP 1.0.1, and did a successful update to Ventura 13.6 - everything seemed painless and worked fine.
So a few moments ago I created a Sonoma USB Installer and did the update to Sonoma 14.0
Drive/File access is a bit slow (as I might expect) but otherwise seems to be running fine.
Just to clarify - no complaints.
I do plan to go to one of the AS minis within the year, but for now,
it's nice to have the current OS available! So yes, Thanks!!
(I did make a contribution to the OCLP team to show my thanks!)
MacMini-Sonoma_2023-10-17.jpg
 
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I have an iMac 5k mid 2017, oclp 1.0.1 and sonoma. Today I tried to install an Apple Arcade game (the last campfire) and after installation, I tried to run the game and I have a pop up message saying that the game is damaged, to uninstall and install again… Is this a bug concerning oclp with Sonoma?
 
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