Most of the notebooks that are releasing today are equipped with intel dual-band wireless cards. As they are not so costly as compared to their counterparts and perform really well in terms of speed and range, they became a perfect choice for notebook manufacturers. However till now, apple macOS doesn’t support these cards natively and also unlike windows, intel doesn’t make drivers for macOS which lefts no choice but to replace the intel wireless card with a supported one. But some manufactures impose wifi card whitelist in BIOS which makes the system un-bootable if the card replace is not whitelisted and also theses replacement cards don’t come with a cheap price tag. Which makes it a dealbreaker while making a Hackintosh notebook.
In 2016 a project was started to make intel wifi card compatible with macOS. The project created a lot of hope in the Hackintosh community however, due to some unknown reason the developer stopped working on the project and left unfinished.
Mounting the EFI Partition and placing kext. Mount your EFI partition of your USB; Copy VoodooPS2Controller.kext from Release folder downloaded above. Navigate to EFI/Clover/kexts/Other and place the both the kexts to this location. Notes: If the kext is already present in the directory, replace them with a new version. Jan 18, 2017 Installing Kexts Automatically. Installing kexts is not as simple as removing them. It can be done manually, but using a kext installation utility like KextBeast is much easier. KextBeast was created for use on Hackintoshes, but it will work just as well on a vanilla Mac. Download KextBeast. If you don’t have a free account with tonymacx86. This saves a lot of time and nervous when installing and configuring the MAC OS X. On the system performance, is not affected. After installing and configuring the system, if there is free time, run 'Disk Utility', and repair the kexts, according to their native permissions. Feb 23, 2016 Some Hackintosh-specific kexts are modified versions of existing Mac OS X kexts, such as AppleHDA.kext. Other kexts are extra additions to the normal list of kexts that OS X runs on startup. In the end, all of these Hackintosh kexts serve the same purpose: to add support to hardware that isn't officially supported by Apple.
Recently a developer zxystd (github) again started a project AppleIntelWifiAdapter in which he ported the Intel WiFi kext from OpenBSD Project, The kext was initially only working on macOS Catalina and some selected Intel WiFi models later the dev released another kext called itlwm which is working with all the released macOS versions post macOS sierra and added support for more Intel WiFi cards.
As per the developers GitHub repo, the kexts supports the following Intel WiFi card models:
- 3xxx: 3160, 3165, 3168
- 7xxx: 7260, 7265
- 9xxx：9260, 9461, 9462, 9560
- 22000：ax200
The kext is currently in the development phase so some of the functions are broken like the wifi card appears as an ethernet connection in settings, so there is no WiFi icon on the toolbar. And also you cannot add new WiFi connections dynamically as the wifi connection details are hardcoded in the kext itself, so in future, after installing the kext if you change your wifi password or name you have to manually edit the wifi kext to make it connect again as of now.
See Also: Best wifi cards for Hackintosh laptop and PC.
Also, there are multiple issues reported by users in GitHub however, in my system the kext is working perfectly fine with intel ac7265
How to install Intel WiFi kext in macOS.
- Download the itlwm kext from here and also download plist editor if you don’t have already.
- Open the kext file by right mouse click and show contents.
- Open the info.plist file using plist editor.
- Then in IOKitPersonalities > itlwm > WIFIconfig > WIFI_1
- Add your wifi name and password. The kext as of now supports a maximum of 5 connections, you can add them in rest of the fields.
- . Run the following commands in terminal to load the kext:
The kext should load just fine and in settings > network tab, you will see a new ethernet connection, which is your wifi card.
Now you got your intel wifi card working on macOS however the above commands only loads the kext for the current session means whenever you shutdown or restart your system you have to enter the commands again to load the kext. To solve the issue you can add the kext into clover/kexts/others folder.
Note: Just to be on the safer side you do not install the kext directly into library/extensions as it might break your system if not loaded correctly. Installing it into clover makes it easy to bypass the kext if an error occurred.
System extensions on macOS Catalina (10.15) allow software like network extensions and endpoint security solutions to extend the functionality of macOS without requiring kernel-level access. At WWDC19, we announced the deprecation of kernel extensions as part of our ongoing effort to modernize the platform, improve security and reliability, and enable more user-friendly distribution methods. Kernel programming interfaces (KPIs) will be deprecated as alternatives become available, and future OS releases will no longer load kernel extensions that use deprecated KPIs by default.
Transitioning Your Kernel Extensions
If your software uses deprecated and supported KPIs, you’ll need to factor out deprecated components into a stand-alone system extension. If your software uses new system extensions and legacy kernel extensions, you can distribute to supported operating systems. Software that supports a broad range of macOS versions should continue to use kernel extensions for older versions and run system extensions where supported.
Below is a list of deprecated KPIs as of macOS 10.15. In macOS 10.15.4, use of deprecated KPIs triggers a notification to the user that the software includes a deprecated API and asks the user to contact the developer for alternatives.
KAUTH
Please use EndpointSecurity instead of the following deprecated KPIs:
- kauth_listen_scope
- kauth_unlisten_scope
Network Filter
Clients should use NetworkExtension instead of the following deprecated KPIs:
- ipf_addv4
- ipf_addv6
- ipf_inject_input
- ipf_inject_output
- ipf_remove
- sflt_attach
- sflt_detach
- sflt_register
- sflt_unregister
- sock_accept
- sock_bind
- sock_close
- sock_connect
- sock_getpeername
- sock_getsockname
- sock_getsockopt
- sock_gettype
- sock_inject_data_in
- sock_inject_data_out
- sock_ioctl
- sock_isconnected
- sock_isnonblocking
- sock_listen
- sock_receive
- sock_receivembuf
- sock_send
- sock_sendmbuf
- sock_setpriv
- sock_setsockopt
- sock_shutdown
- sock_socket
- sockopt_copyin
- sockopt_copyout
- sockopt_direction
- sockopt_level
- sockopt_name
- sockopt_valsize
IOHIDFamily
All KPIs in IOHIDFamily are deprecated. Clients should use HIDDriverKit instead.
IOUSBFamily
IOUSBFamily has been deprecated and headers removed from SDK since macOS El Capitan (10.11). All clients should move to IOUSBHostFamily or USBDriverKit, where appropriate and outlined below.
USB Networking
The combination of using IONetworkingFamily KPIs as well as any USB KPI (IOUSBHostFamily or IOUSBFamily) is deprecated. USB KPIs have alternatives in USBDriverKit . Clients of IONetworkingFamily KPIs should use NetworkingDriverKit instead.
USB Serial
The combination of using any IOSerialFamily KPI as well as any USB KPI (IOUSBHostFamily or IOUSBFamily) is deprecated. USB KPIs have alternatives in USBDriverKit. Clients of IOSerialFamily KPIs should use SerialDriverKit or USBSerialDriverKit instead.
USB Vendor Specific IPC
Any kernel extension using USB KPI (IOUSBHostFamily or IOUSBFamily) that does not tie into the IO Family subsystem and uses IOUserClient, or subclasses, for IPC is deprecated. USB KPIs have alternatives in USBDriverKit or consider IOUSBHost. DriverKit also has mechanisms for communication channels.
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Mac Os Mojave
To deploy drivers built with DriverKit, allow other developers to use your system extensions, or use the EndpointSecurity API, you’ll need an entitlement from Apple.
Kexts For Mac Os Versions
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