WiFi_Sonoma.md

How to re-enable previously supported WiFi/BT cards in macOS Sonoma+ with OpenCore Legacy Patcher

Applicable to: OCLP 1.0.0+

INDEX

• Technical Background
  • What about Bluetooth?
  • What about Intel?
• Instructions (Broadcom and Atheros)
  • Config and EFI adjustments
  • Verifying added Kexts
  • Applying Root Patches to re-enable Wi-Fi Cards
• Instructions (Intel)
  • Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth
  • Troubleshooting Intel BT
• Credits

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Technical Background

During the early stages of macOS Sonoma development, kexts and frameworks required for driving older Wi-Fi/BT Cards were removed from the OS, leaving the Wi-Fi portion of commonly used BT/Wi-Fi cards in a non-working state.

This affects the following Wi-Fi card chipsets:

• "Modern" cards:
  • Broadcom:BCM94350 (incuding BCM94352), BCM94360, BCM43602, BCM94331, BCM943224
  • Required Kexts: IOSkywalkFamily, IO80211FamilyLegacy, AirPortBrcmNIC, AirportBrcmFixup, AirPortBrcmNIC_Injector.
• "Legacy" cards:
  • Atheros: AR928X, AR93xx, AR242x/AR542x, AR5418, AR5416 (never used by Apple)
  • Broadcom: BCM94322, BCM94328
  • Required Kexts: corecaptureElCap, IO80211ElCap, AirPortAtheros40 (for Atheros only)

Thanks to Dortania's OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OCLP), it's possible to re-enable these Wi-Fi cards by patching some system files (as well as injecting additional kexts via OpenCore). If you want to know how Wi-Fi patching with OCLP works, have a look at this post.

Besides patching Wifi/BT cards officially used in Apple products, OCLP also supports Wi-Fi patching of systems with 3rd party Broadcom chipsets (enabled by AirportBrcmFixup.kext) which are often found in Hackintoshes:

• device-id pci12e4,4357 → BCM43225
• device-id pci12e4,43B1 → BCM4352
• device-id pci12e4,43B2 → BCM4352 (2.4 GHz).

What about Bluetooth?

Generally speaking, if a) your system's USB ports are mapped correctly and b) the latest kexts required for enabling Bluetooth are present in your EFI folder, BT will most likely work already after installing macOS 14. macOS Sequoia requires additional NVRAM entries in the config.plist in order for BT to work.

What about Intel?

Since Apple never used Intel Wi-Fi/BT cards in their Macs, there are no root patches available nor required. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are handled kexts provided by the OpenIntelWireless project (except for BluetoolFixup.kext which is part of BrcmPatchRAM). The required kexts and config setting are also listed in the examples for Kext Loading Sequence. macOS Sequoia requires additional NVRAM entries in the config.plist in order for BT to work.

Instructions (Broadcom and Atheros)

Config and EFI adjustments

Apply the following changes to your config (or copy them over from the plist examples (→ Legacy WiFi → Modern WiFi) and add the listed kexts to EFI/OC/Kexts folder:

Config Section	Action
Kernel/Add	For "Modern" Wi-Fi cards, add the following Kexts from the OCLP Repo: IOSkywalkFamily.kext IO80211FamilyLegacy.kext (and its Plugin AirPortBrcmNIC.kext) AirportBrcmFixup (and its plugin AirPortBrcmNIC_Injector.kext) available here AMFIPass.kext (if not present already) Organize the kexts as shown below and add MinKernel settings: For "Legacy" cards, add the following kexts instead (available here): corecaptureElCap.kext IO80211ElCap.kext and its Plugin AirPortAtheros40.kext (Enable for Atheros Cards) AMFIPass.kext (if not present already) Adjust MinKernel Settings as shown below: For Bluetooth (macOS 12+): Add BlueToolFixup.kext Set MinKernel to: 21.0.0 Adjust MinKernel and MaxKernel settings for previous BT kexts accordingly:
Kernel/Block	Block IOSkywalkFamily (Modern Wi-Fi only): NOTE: If you are using an USB Ethernet dongle utilizing the ECM protocol, you also have to add ECM-Override.kext to prevent a kernel panic because Apple's DriverKit stack uses IOSkywalk for ECM dongles.
Misc/Security	Change SecureBootModel to Disabled to rule-out early Kernel Panics caused by security conflicts. You can re-enable it afterwards once everything is working!
NVRAM/Add/...-FE41995C9F82	Change csr-active-config to 03080000 Optional: add amfi=0x80 to boot-args if root patches can't be applied (disable afterwards) Optional: add -brcmfxbeta to boot-args if you cannot connect to Wi-Fi after applying root patches. Optional: add -amfipassbeta to boot-args (if AMFIPass.kext is not loaded in the latest beta of Sonoma). In macOS Sequoia, also add the following entries: bluetoothInternalControllerInfo Type: Data Value: 00000000 00000000 00000000 0000 bluetoothExternalDongleFailed Type: Data Value: 00 Screenshot:
NVRAM/Delete...-FE41995C9F82	Add the following parameters: csr-active-config boot-args bluetoothInternalControllerInfo bluetoothExternalDongleFailed

Note

• Make sure to perform an NVRAM reset after applying these settings and after switching macOS versions (if you have different versions of macOS installed)
• I have noticed that it can take 5 to 10 seconds or so until BT is available after applying these changes.

Verifying added Kexts

Prior to applying root patches it's probably a good idea to verify that the kexts we added are loaded.

• Save your config and reboot
• Reset NVRAM
• Boot into macOS Sonoma+
• Next, open Termial and enter kextstat
• This will list all loaded kexts. Verify that the following kexts are present (use CMD+F for searching):
  • For "Modern" Wi-Fi:
    • IOSkywalkFamily
    • IO80211FamilyLegacy
    • AirportBrcmFixup
    • AirPort.BrcmNIC
    • Amfipass
  • For "Legacy" Wi-Fi:
    • corecaptureElCap
    • IO80211ElCap
    • AirPortAtheros40
    • Amfipass
• If these kexts are not loaded, you have to check your config and EFI/OC folder again.
• If Amfipass is not loaded, add -amfipassbeta boot-arg and reboot
• If Wi-Fi is available but you cannot connect to any access points, add -brcmfxbeta boot-arg and reboot.

Once you have verified that the required kext are actually loaded, you can continue with applying root patches with OCLP

Applying Root Patches to re-enable Wi-Fi Cards

• Download the latest release of OpenCore Legacy Patcher and install it.
• Run OCLP and click on "Post Install Root Patch".
• If the option to patch "Networking: Modern Wireless" or "Networking: Legacy Wireless" is available, click on "Start Root Patching" (otherwise check → Troubleshooting)
• Once patching is done, reboot
• Enjoy working Wi-Fi again!

Example: Modern Wi-Fi patching (Click to reveal!)

• Option "Networking Modern Wireless" is available:
  
• Patching in Progress. In my case, it's for a BCM94352HMB (Modern):
  
• Wi-Fi is working again:
  

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Instructions (Intel)

Wi-Fi

For enabling Wi-Fi cards from Intel, there are actually 2 kexts available that can be used: Itlwm.kext and AirportItlwm.kext. While AirportItlwm acts as a Wi-Fi driver, the card will be detected as an Ethernet Controller when using Itlwm. Both kexts have different pros and cons, so which one to use depends on personal preference and the used OS (find out more).

Unlike Itlwm.kext, AirportItlwm.kext requires a different variant of the kext per macOS version (macOS High Sierra up to Sonoma are currently supported). In macOS Sequoia, using itlwm.kext is mandatory to get WiFi working. When using Itlwm.kext, you also need an additional app called HeliPort to connect to Wi-Fi Hotspots.

If you have multiple versions of macOS installed and want to use AirportItlwm.kext in all of them, you have to a) rename the kexts in order to place them all in the "kexts" folder and b) you also have to adjust their MinKernel and MaxKernel settings, so only the correct one gets loaded.

Listed below are instruction of how to cobinate itlwm and AirportIlmw kexts. In this case, itlwm is used for macOS Sequoia, while AirportItlwm is used for macOS Big Sur up to Sonoma.

1. Visit https://github.com/OpenIntelWireless/itlwm/releases
2. Click on “Assets”
3. Download the builds of the AirportItlwm of your choice
4. Extract and rename them: I usually add an underscore followed by the name of the OS, e.g. AirportItlwm_Sonoma.kext (don’t add blank spaces!)
5. Add them to EFI/OC/Kexts and your config.plist
6. Disable itlwm.kext (if present)
7. Next, add MinKernel and MaxKernel settings to limit the kext to only load the kext for the macOS version it’s designed for:
   
8. Save your config and reboot

Important

• Use either AirportItlwm or Itlwm – never both!
• When using AirportItlwm, adding the correct MinKernel and MaxKernel settings is madatory. Otherwise Wi-Fi won’t work and the system might crash when injecting the kext multiple times!
• When renaming kexts, you can’t automatically fetch kext updates for them with tools like OCAT any longer.
• When updating macOS Sonoma (14.3 and newer), you must disable AirportItlwm.kext in favor of itlwm.kext and set SecureBootModel to Disabled prior to updating. Otherwise the installer will crash (more info). Afterwards, you can enable SecureBootModel again.

Bluetooth

If your Intel Wi-FI/BT card is supported by the OpenIntelWireless project, the following kexts are required for enabling Bluetooth in macOS 14+ (→ plist):

Kext	Comment	MinKernel	MaxKernel
BlueToolFixup.kext	BT enabler for macOS 12 and newer	21.0.0
IntelBluetoothFirmware.kext	Intel BT FIrmware

Screenshot:

Note

• Make sure to perform an NVRAM reset after applying these settings and after switching macOS versions (if you have different versions of macOS installed)
• I have noticed that it can take like 10 seconds or so until BT is available after applying these changes.
• For using Intel Bluetooth in macOS Monterey and newer, read this.

Troubleshooting Intel BT

If BT is not working after adding the two kexts, do the following:

• Open Terminal and enter NVRAM -p
• If the output contains bluetoothExternalDongleFailed=%01, you need to change it to %00 in NVRAM.
• So enter: sudo NVRAM bluetoothExternalDongleFailed=%00
• Followed by sudo pkill bluetoothd to kill and restart the Bluetooth stack

Credits

• Acidanthera for OpenCore and Kexts
• Dortania for OpenCore Legacy Patcher
• Acquarius13 for figuring out what to edit in OCLPs Source Code
• deeveedee for pointing me towards using brcmfxbeta boot-arg
• jrycm for tips with getting Intel Cards to work on Sequoia 15.2