Hackintosh for Thinkpad L460

Warning

I am not responsible for any damages you may cause

This repository's main goal is to document my hackintosh journey. It is not meant to provide an out-of-the-box experience on doing hackintosh! If you're new to Hackintosh please make your own EFI by following Dortania guide instead

If you insist on using my EFI, use it with your own risk, please note that I will NOT provide any support

💻 Hardware

• CPU: Intel Core i5-6300U
• GPU: Intel HD 520 (Spoofed as HD 620)
• RAM: 8GB
• Storage: 256GB SSD SATA (SSDSC2KF256H6L)
• Screen Resolution: 1920x1080
• Audio Codec: Realtek ALC3245/ALC293
• LAN: Intel i219
• WLAN/Bluetooth: Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260

BIOS Config

Menu			Setting	Note
Config	USB	UEFI BIOS Support	Enable
	Power	Intel SpeedStep Technology	Enable
		CPU Power Management	Enable
Security	Security Chip		Disable
	Memory Protection	Execution Prevention	Enable
	Virtualization	Intel Virtualization Technology	Enable
		Intel VT-d Feature	Enable
	Anti-Theft	Computrace	Disable
	Secure Boot		Disable	Can be enabled if you sign OpenCore
	Intel SGX		Disable
	Device Guard		Disable
Startup	UEFI/Legacy Boot		UEFI Only
	CSM Support		No

Setup

• Follow Dortania guide to create macOS installer
• On "Setting up the EFI" part, drop the EFI/ from this repo to your installer's EFI partition
• Rename Config.public.plist to Config.plist
  • Optional: follow Dortania guide's PlatformInfo section (Mainly for MLB, SystemSerialNumber, and SystemUUID, not really needed just yet)
• Boot to USB and Install macOS
• Now you can try Post-Install section's config, all of them are optional but could be useful (especially if you want to Apple Services such as iMessage)

Post-Install

Useful configuration you can do after you successfully installed macOS

Enable Apple Services

Config to allow you to use Apple Services (such as iMessage)

Note

If you (still) can't login to iMessage you may need to contact Apple Support to unblacklist your AppleID (You can try opening the Message app from terminal to check the log to see if you're getting a Customer Code error, which is an indication that your AppleID got blacklisted. See more info here)

1. Download (or clone) GenSMBIOS and run it in terminal
2. Type 3 to generate SMBIOS, then press Enter
3. Type MacBookPro14,1 5, then press Enter
4. Open EFI/Config.plist (I highly recommend using ProperTree) and navigate to PlatformInfo -> Generic
5. Add one of the script's result to MLB, SystemSerialNumber, and SystemUUID
6. Replace ROM with your MAC Address (System Preferences -> Network -> Ethernet -> Advanced -> Hardware -> MAC Address, then remove all the colons :). Or you can also try using a real Apple MAC Address
7. Save and Reboot
8. Check the Serial Number validity. Repeat step 5 and choose different result (or generate new set of SMBIOS) until you find invalid Serial Number

Disable S3/S4

This is the stupid simple way to fix sleep related issues, simply disable S3/S4:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo pmset -a proximitywake 0
sudo pmset -a standbydelayhigh 0
sudo pmset -a ttyskeepawake 0
sudo pmset -a gpuswitch 0
sudo pmset -a halfdim 0
sudo pmset -a womp 0
sudo pmset -a acwake 0
sudo pmset -a networkoversleep 0
sudo pmset -a tcpkeepalive 0

I personally don't do this since it's no fun but also doesn't actually fix the issue, just disabling some problematic features

Bluetooth Workaround

1. Get your Bluetooth Controller's MAC Address,
   • Method 1:
     Run this command in a terminal and copy the result:

     system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType | grep "Address:" | head -1 | sed "s/ *Address: \(.*\)/\1/g"

   • Method 2:
     1. Click the Apple logo at the top-left corner then click About This Mac
     2. Go to System Report,
        • On Monterey or older, just click System Report
        • On Ventura or newer, click More Info, scroll all the way down then click System Report
     3. Navigate to Bluetooth menu (Hardware > Bluetooth)
     4. Under Bluetooth Controller copy the MAC Address
2. Add this line to the /etc/zshenv (or /etc/bashrc) file:

   export BT_DEVICE_ADDRESS="PASTE:YOUR:MAC:ADDRESS:HERE"

3. Reboot to apply the changes
4. Get into S3/S4 sleep then try connecting to a device via Bluetooth

Ventura 13.x Reboot Into Recovery

Not sure what happened here, but ResetNVRAM seems to fix this issue, if it seems like your hackintosh is stuck on Apple logo with progressbar, just wait until it reboot itself.

Reducing itlwm and/or IntelBluetoothFirmware Kext's filesize

• Go to either of these repo:
  • https://github.com/null2264/itlwm
  • https://github.com/null2264/IntelBluetoothFirmware
• Click "Use this template" and wait for your repo to be ready
• Make sure Actions is enabled on the repo
• Edit .github/workflows/main.yml file, find "Delete unused firmware"
• Replace ibt-11-5 or iwm-8000C with your card
• To retrieve the Kext:
  • Go to Releases page (should be on the sidebar, or just append /releases/ on your url bar)
  • If you did it correctly, the kext should appear there

EFI "Not Enough Disk Space" error

• Empty your Trash Bin
• Profit-

If that didn't work:

Caution

This process is essentially formatting your EFI partition, please make sure to backup your EFI partition and have a working bootable USB ready in case of emergency!

• Backup your EFI
• Run diskutil list, then grab your EFI partition's IDENTIFIER (e.g. disk0s1)
• Run newfs_msdos -v EFI -F 32 /dev/<IDENTIFIER>, e.g. (newfs_msdos -v EFI -F 32 /dev/disk0s1)
  • This command requires sudo!
• Copy your backed up EFI into the newly formatted EFI partition
• Now you can restart and pray that you didn't mess up :^)

Not entirely sure why EFI partition is filling up like that but I recommend:

• To delete a file (for example when you're updating a kext) before replacing it
• Empty your Trash Bin before ejecting the EFI partition (or restarting your macOS)

Undervolting

This EFI has VoltageShiftSecure installed, you can use this to undervolt your device, you may need to grab their binary to configure it.

My current setup:

• CPU voltage offset: -80mv
• GPU voltage offset: -80mv
• CPU Cache voltage offset: -60mv

Adding EFI to UEFI Boot Entry

There are cases where BIOS refuses to detect HDD as bootable drive, or maybe you want to dual-boot in the future. The best way to fix it is by adding EFI to UEFI Boot Entry manually:

From Outside of OpenCore (Recommended):

• Create a Linux live USB and boot directly to it (make sure it has efibootmgr, I recommend Linux Mint)
• Use efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/<your bootable drive> --part <ESP Number> --loader \\EFI\\OC\\OpenCore.efi --label "OpenCore"
• Now when you reboot you'll see OpenCore entry on your boot options

From OpenCore - UEFI Shell:

Caution

This process is very sensitive, it's the not recommended way.

• Boot to OpenCore
• Press space before it auto boot you to macOS
• Select UEFI Shell
• Run map command and find where your EFI is located (in my case it's FS0)
• Run FS0:\EFI\OC\Tools\OpenControl.efi disable
• Run bcfg boot add 0 FS0:\EFI\OC\OpenCore.efi "OpenCore"
• Finally, run reset to reboot your system

From OpenCore - Config.plist:

Caution

I don't recommend using this method if you're using USB to boot to OpenCore

• Open EFI/OC/Config.plist using your plist editor of choice (I recommend ProperTree)
• Go to Misc > Boot > LauncherOption, set it from Disabled to Full

Enabling Secure Boot

Using shim

TODO - https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/blob/master/Utilities/ShimUtils/README.md

I haven't done it myself, but you can skip inserting your own signature if you use Shim bootloader and chainload OpenCore from it, Shim itself is (usually) signed using Microsoft cert, but of course Microsoft wouldn't want people to use it to bypass Secure Boot, so Shim has a verification logic that check if the MOK (iirc it can be either a hash or a signature) inside an image (e.g. EFI) is in the MOK (Machine Owner Key) list. It'll also allow you to enroll the MOK pretty easily, no need to use KeyTool and stuff, it'll just prompt you.

Manual

If you for some reason need to enable Secure Boot, you can follow the guide made by perez987. The guide is a bit confusing to navigate through, but the key points are:

• OpenCore and UEFI Secure Boot with WSL
  If you're using Linux, just skip the WSL part, the rest is pretty much just Linux. The gist is you need a way to access to a Linux system, use VM, Live USB, or even WSL.
• Insert signature to the UEFI firmware
  How I do it:
  • Copy KeyTool.efi from /usr/share/efitools/efi/ to my EFI partition
    • Or use the one in Signed/ directory if you use signing-bootstrap script
  • Copy all .auth file to my EFI partition
  • Reboot my Hack to BIOS settings, go to Secure Boot, select "Reset to Setup Mode" to enter Setup Mode
  • Boot to OpenCore, select UEFI Shell
  • Run FS0:\KeyTool.efi
  • Go to Edit Keys
  • The Allowed Signature Database (db)
    • Select Replace Key(s)
    • Go to EFI
    • Select db.auth
  • The Key Exchange Keys Database (KEK)
    • Select Replace Key(s)
    • Go to EFI
    • Select KEK.auth
  • The Platform Key (PK)
    • Select Replace Key(s)
    • Go to EFI
    • Select PK.auth
  • Exit
  • Run reset
  • Reboot to BIOS settings, greeted "Configuration Changed"
  • Reboot to BIOS settings again, go to Secure Boot, enable it, reboot to OpenCore
  • Profit-

🔧 Status

Note

Your experience may vary

• Working = Doesn't affecting workflow that much or straight up working out-of-the-box
• Partially Working = Working but sometimes require reboot to fix
• Not Working = Doesn't work at all or delibrately disabled by me
• Not Tested = Can't be tested at the moment

✔️ Working

• CPU (Power Managament)
• GPU (Acceleration)
  • Glitches and Flickers, can be fixed by adding AAPL,GfxYTile property. It still sometimes happened under certain circumstances such as:
    • Using HiDPI
    • Connect to an external monitor (Maybe because my monitor's (native) resolution is under 1080, I don't have a 1080p monitor so I can't test it further)
    • Using resolution higher or lower than the internal monitor native resolution
  • KabyLake's color-banding issue, the only fixes related to this require spoofing GPU to SkyLake (My external monitor doesn't have this issue, so maybe it's hardware)
    • Some says injecting fake EDID could fix this issue, but it doesn't work for me
• Restart + S3/S4 Sleep + Shutdown
• Audio + Combo Jack (using OpenALC)
• Brightness (and brightness control hotkeys)
• Trackpad + Trackpoint + Clickpad
• Wired Ethernet (using Mausi)
  Note: If your connection keep disconnecting, you may need to connect your Ethernet cable before turning on your laptop atleast once. After that it should work perfectly fine even after unplugging and plugging the cable in again
• Bluetooth (Try Bluetooth Workaround if you get "Volume Hash Mismatch" error after waking from sleep, if it doesn't work you can always reboot to fix it)
• USB Ports
  • USB Tethering via HoRNDIS
• VGA (is DP internally, so it's natively supported)
• WiFi (using AirPortOpenBSD or AirportItlwm/itlwm)
  • Can't connect to WiFi with hidden SSID
    • Use AirPortOpenBSD
      • Sometimes it doesn't want to connect, I recommend not using hidden SSID at all when you don't actuallly need it
    • Use itlwm+HeliPort instead to fix this
  • (AirPortOpenBSD) WiFi sometimes doesn't show up, this could be caused by WLAN channel overlaps
    • Try changing your Access Point's WLAN Channel to something else to fix it
    • (Only for AirPortOpenBSD - v2.3.0 or newer) You try turning on and off the wifi connection on macOS
    • (Only for AirPortOpenBSD - v2.3.0 or newer) You can also try clicking "other" and manually connect to the WiFi
      • If it says "network couldn't be found", try turning off and on again the WiFi (your device's wifi connect and/or your access point), then try again

⚠️ Partially Working

• _Qxx EC Query not firing after sleep, caused FN Hotkeys and some battery update functions to stop working, reboot is required to fix it. A common issue on E-Series and L-series ThinkPad
  • After some testing, this seems to be a firmware issue
• DRM
  • iGPU-only DRM is completely broken, use browser with Widevine DRM instead
  • Some iGPU-only Laptop users reported that unfairgva=4 fixed it, you may test it on your device, but this workaround doesn't seems to be working on my Laptop

❌ Not Working

• SD Card Reader (Disabled on BIOS)
  • If you need SD Card Reader you can try adding Sinetek-rtsx or RealtekCardReader to your EFI

❓ Not Tested

• MiniDP
  • Need MiniDP adapter since none of my devices use MiniDP

📋 TODO

• Dump ACPI into this repo

📂 Other Repositories

• ThinkPad X1C6:
  • benbender/x1c6-hackintosh
  • tylernguyen/x1c6-hackintosh
• ThinkPad T460s:
  • simprecicchiani/ThinkPad-T460s-macOS-OpenCore

ℹ️ Credits

• @a565109863 for AirPortOpenBSD
• @acidanthera for maintaining and developing a lot of amazing Kexts
• @benbender for SSDT-Sleep that I adapted to work with L460
• @corpnewt for gibMacOS and MountEFI
• @dortania for their amazing guide
• @jwise for HoRNDIS
• @perez987 for their secure boot guide
• @zhen-zen for YogaSMC
• @zxystd for itlwm and IntelBluetoothFirmware
• r/hackintosh community for helping me find solution to various issue I came across

🔗 External Links

• LENOVO ThinkPad L460 Technical Specs PDF