Deckintosh Guide

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This is a guide targeted at getting users to run macOS natively on their Steam Decks.

Some things to know:

1. Barely anything works. Many devices do not have support. This is more of a "Look what I can do!" thing as of right now.

2. Be careful when it comes to actually installing macOS! Part of the process involves formatting a drive of your choosing. Picking the internal drive will EASILY wipe your SteamOS install or whatever OS you currently have.

3. With #2 being said, you can in fact dual boot macOS and SteamOS/Windows/whatever on the same drive with some elbow grease.

4. This is a an extension of CodeRunner5235's OpenCore on Steam Deck guide. (does this even qualify as a guide?) Also, I don't own any of the software used. They don't own any of the software used.

5. Stuff will be fixed or not depending on if someone takes interest and adds support. PLEASE dont ask when stuff with be supported, I don't know. As support is added, and added in a way the devs of the software are comfortable with, I will update the guide.

6. PLEASE DO NOT FLOOD THE HACKINTOSH SERVERS FOR SUPPORT REQUESTS. Whether it be Discord or others. These are niche devices that barely run macOS. For the love of all thats good and holy, dont pester the volunteers that help others with this meme of a computer. If you must ask, come here to and ask IN THE DISCUSSIONS.

7. Booting from the SD card slot will not work in most cases (booting an online recovery image should work as it is run from memory, not the SD card itself). If you are using an offline image or a full macOS install, you will need to boot from USB or the internal NVME.

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Prerequisites

• A Steam Deck (OLED), becase what else is this guide for?
• (Optionally) Another computer unless you have 15 hours of free time and can deal with installing Windows, continuing from there, formatting your install device again

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Getting Started

Firstly, you need to understand how to run macOS on any other PC. Go to the Dortania OpenCore install guide and familiarize yourself with it.

Dortania's guide has everything needed for setting up OpenCore, the bootloader we'll be using to install macOS. This guide depends heavily on Dortania's, so please make sure you've gone through it thoroughly.

As you are following the guide and when you get to the Gathering Files portion, you will want to have these files for the Steam Deck:

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ACPI

For this, you are going to want to download a tool called SSDTTime. After running this tool on the Steam Deck, you are first going to choose option P to dump you DSDT. If you are running this tool from another machine, you'll need to have the SSDT/DSDT dumps from your Deck. Please don't try to use your other machine's dumps. That's just flatout stupid. Then you are going to select option 3 to make a SSDT-EC.aml. It should be in the results folder. Copy this to your EFI -> ACPI folder, as per the OpenCore guide instructions.

You will also need the CPUR SSDT.

In the end, you should have two files in the ACPI folder:

1. SSDT-CPUR.aml
2. SSDT-EC.aml

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Firmware Drivers

You'll want to keep 2 (preferably 3 drivers) that're included in the stock EFI folder by default:

1. OpenHFSPlus.efi (HFS+/macOS Extended driver, REQUIRED TO BOOT THE INSTALLER)
2. OpenRuntime.efi (Runtime for OC, REQURIED)
3. OpenCanopy.efi (OPTIONAL, If you want a mac-like boot picker follow this tutorial)

Everything else can and SHOULD be trashed since some of these drivers have tool entries that add clutter to the boot picker.

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Tools and Resources

Drag the Tools folder to the trash. Yes I'm serious. We don't need them right now and they can make things much more confusing in the boot menu.

If you are not using OpenCanopy, the Resources folder can go too.

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Kexts (USB mapping NEEDS Windows or macOS, read kext 4 for more details)

Note: Kexts look like regular folders with .kext at the end on Windows and Linux. Just get these folders, as these are what you want.

Make sure you have these kexts in your Kexts folder:

1. Lilu.kext (essential, macOS will NOT boot without this)
2. VirtualSMC.kext Yank VirtualSMC and SMCBatteryManager, throw away the folder, and then get SMCAMDProcessor.
3. GUX-RyzenXHCIFix So I was actually able to boot without this. If you want it then here you go I guess.
4. USBToolBox.kext, which is required when you're using USBMap.kext.
5. For USBMap.kext, make your own with the USBToolBox tool which REQUIRES Windows and DOES NOT support SteamOS or any other form of Linux, or if you dont have Windows and you're too lazy to boot into a Hiren's BootCD ISO, you can use this map which can be a hit or miss. This prebuilt version isn't guaranteed to work with your exact Deck.
6. AppleMCEReporterDisabler.kext is only needed for macOS Big Sur and above.
7. VoodooI2C and VoodooI2CHID if you actually want your touchscreen to work. Unless you're some kind of insect that can use the trackpad sideways without messing up easily.

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config.plist

After nabbing the Sample.plist from the OpenCorePkg -> Docs folder, moving it to your OC folder and renaming it to config.plist, continue following the steps in the Ryzen and Threadripper portion of the guide with just a few changes:

2. For the AMD patches under the Kernel, the Steam Deck's CPU has 4 cores and 8 threads. Ignore the threads and just put in 4 cores.

3. Avoid enabling HideAuxiliary under Misc -> Boot, otherwise, you can't see the macrecovery DMGs and other tools till you press 'Space'. And if you're like me and don't have a USB hub or docking station (good luck), you'll REALLY wanna turn this on.

4. Set SecureBootModel under Misc -> Security to Disabled to make life easier.

5. Don't be an idiot and add all the boot arguments (under NVRAM -> 7C436110-AB2A-4BBB-A880-FE41995C9F82 -> boot-args) you see on the guide. I'd suggest using -v debug=0x100 keepsyms=1 agdpmod=pikera -radcodec vsmcgen=1.

6. If you want to run modern versions of macOS, I'd suggest MacBookPro16,X. macOS Tahoe requires MacBookPro16,2. The reason why we're using MacBook Pros is to get the battery indicator to actually show up. Correct me if I'm wrong but MacPro7,1 doesn't have this.

7. Under UEFI -> Output, set DirectGopRendering to True and set the Resolution to 1280x720 (change the data type to a string).

   IMPORTANT: Not enabling DirectGopRendering will result in OpenCore booting in the right orientation and resolution, BUT after that everything is garbled. If you also don't set the resolution to 1280x720, EVERYTHING will appear garbled.

   While you're at it, make sure you also enable AppleEg2Info under UEFI > ProtocolOverrides and set ForceDisplayRotationInEFI under NVRAM > Add > 7C436110-AB2A-4BBB-A880-FE41995C9F82 to 90 (thanks Hack n' Patch). This will only rotate the bootloader though.

And that's it! After you follow the rest of the Install guide for Ryzen, you should be able to boot into an extremely slow macOS install. Have... fun.

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BONUS: Installing macOS offline with a single USB port! If you're trying to install macOS without a USB hub or docking station, well, you shouldn't be because it's absolutely painful. But it's still possible.

Though you will need:

• A USB stick that can hold both the online and offline version of the macOS version you're trying to install. In this case, if you're installing Sequoia, you'll need a stick larger than 16 gigabytes of storage.
• Your Steam Deck to be charged a fair bit since macOS won't allow you to install on "low battery" (even if it's 35%).
• An external keyboard that's wired or has a 2.4 gigahertz dongle.
• And obviously, an external computer with Python 3 installed.

1. Create 2 partitions on your USB stick. One should be around 1 GB (1024 MB, FAT32) to hold your EFI and online recovery image, and the other one (exFAT) can take up the extra storage.
2. Download the same major version of macOS from macrecovery (in the OpenCorePkg folder > Utilites) and gibMacOS. Put the com.apple.recovery.boot folder from macrecovery on the 1 GB partition and the files downloaded via gibMacOS on the other partition. Also add UnPlugged.command to the exFAT partition.
3. Edit the UnPlugged.command file on the disk and hardcode the input values since we can't type anything when the command's running. Do this by finding the read -p lines and create a variable (found at the end of the line) in its place with what you think will fit.
4. Now, boot into the online recovery image and first enter Disk Utility to see what your exFAT partition is recognized as (for me it's disk3s2), then enter the terminal. Unplug your USB stick (don't worry this won't break macOS) and use your keyboard to just type these 4 commands.

mkdir /Volumes/UnPlugged
/sbin/mount_exfat /dev/disk3s2 /Volumes/UnPlugged
cd /Volumes/UnPlugged
./UnPlugged.command 

4. Plug your USB back in and press up on the D-Pad 4 times, then press A to re-execute the command. Do this 4 times.
5. You should be greeted with the macOS install screen now. You can continue as normal from this point.

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Picture Examples

OC folder

ACPI folder

Drivers folder

Kexts folder