OpenCore Legacy Patcher

# Working Around Legacy Acceleration Issues

The below page is for users experiencing issues with their overall usage of macOS Big Sur / Monterey / Ventura and the Legacy Graphics Acceleration patches. Note that the following GPUs currently do not have acceleration support in Big Sur / Monterey / Ventura:

  • Intel 3rd and 4th Gen - GMA series

For those unfamiliar with what is considered a non-Metal GPU, see the chart below:

macOS GPU Chart

Metal is Apple's in-house graphics API that acts as a replacement for OpenGL/OpenCL, introduced in 2015. With the release of macOS Mojave, every system without a Metal-capable GPU was dropped.

Graphics Vendor Architecture Series Supports Metal
ATI TeraScale 1 HD 2XXX - HD 4XXX No
TeraScale 2 HD 5XXX - HD 6XXX
AMD GCN (and newer) HD 7XXX+ Yes
NVIDIA Tesla 8XXX - 3XX No
Fermi 4XX - 5XX
Kepler 6XX - 7XX Yes
Maxwell 8XX - 9XX No (on 10.14 and newer)
Pascal 10XX
Intel GMA GMA 900 - GMA X3000 No
Iron Lake HD series
Sandy Bridge HD 3000
Ivy Bridge (and newer) HD 4000 Yes

# Broken Background Blurs

By default with the non-Metal acceleration patches, many background blur menus may act distorted when moving a cursor over it. With 0.4.1 and newer, users can enable a new Beta Blur feature to try and resolve the issue:

Do note that enabling beta blurs can be more demanding on slower hardware

# Downloading older non-Metal Apps

Many Apple apps now have direct reliance on Metal for proper functioning, however legacy builds of these apps still do work in Big Sur. See below for archive of many apps such as Pages, iMovie, GarageBand.

Note: This archive assumes that you own these copies of these apps through the Mac App Store, Dortania does not condone piracy

# Unable to run Zoom

Currently Zoom relies partially on Metal and so needs a small binary patch. Dosdude1 has provided a nice script for this:

# Unable to grant special permissions to apps (ie. Camera Access to Zoom)

Currently for Ventura 13.3 and newer, due to new patches required, permissions are yet again broken. Use TCCPlus in the Workaround dropdown to work around the issue.

This issue is fully resolved for 13.2.1 and lower starting from 0.2.5.

Workaround for 0.2.4, Ventura 13.3+

Due to the usage of amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1, macOS will fail to prompt users for special permissions upon application start as well as omit the entries in System Preferences. To work around this, we recommend users install tccplus to manage permissions.

Download TCCPlus (opens new window)

Example usage with Discord and microphone permissions:

# Open Terminal and run the following commands
cd ~/Downloads/
chmod +x tccplus
./tccplus add Microphone com.hnc.Discord

For those who may experience issues with tccplus, you can manually patch com.apple.TCC to add permissions:

# get app id (Zoom.us used in example):
$ osascript -e 'id of app "zoom.us"'
# output: us.zoom.xos

$ sudo sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db "INSERT or REPLACE INTO access VALUES('kTCCServiceMicrophone','us.zoom.xos',0,2,0,1,NULL,NULL,NULL,'UNUSED',NULL,0,1541440109);"

$ sudo sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db "INSERT or REPLACE INTO access VALUES('kTCCServiceCamera','us.zoom.xos',0,2,0,1,NULL,NULL,NULL,'UNUSED',NULL,0,1541440109);"

# Keyboard Backlight broken

Due to forcing hidd into spinning up with the fallback mode enabled, this can break the OS's recognition of backlight keyboards. Thankfully the drivers themselves still do operate so applications such as LabTick (opens new window) are able to set the brightness manually.

# Photos and Maps Apps Heavily Distorted

Due to the Metal Backend, the enhanced color output of these apps seems to heavily break overall UI usage. To work around this, users reported (opens new window) forcing the color output of their monitor from Billions to Millions of colors helped greatly. Apps easily allowing this customization are SwitchResX (opens new window), ResXreme (opens new window) and EasyRes (opens new window).

# Cannot press "Done" when editing a Sidebar Widget

Workaround: Press some combination of Tab, or Tab and then Shift-Tab, or just Shift-Tab until the "Done" button is highlighted. Then press spacebar to activate the button, the same as in any other dialog with a highlighted button halo.

# Wake from sleep heavily distorted on AMD/ATI from macOS 11.3 to Monterey

Fixed for macOS Ventura starting from 0.6.6. Big Sur and Monterey will continue to exhibit the issue.

For older versions, only known solution is to downgrade to macOS 11.2.3 or older. Additionally, logging out and logging back in can resolve the issue without requiring a reboot.

  • Note, this issue should be exclusive to TeraScale 1 GPUs (ie. HD2000-4000). TeraScale 2 GPUs should not exhibit this issue.

In the event Apple removes 11.2.3 from their catalogue, we've provided a mirror below:

# Unable to switch GPUs on 2011 15" and 17" MacBook Pros

Currently, with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, GPU switching between the iGPU and dGPU is broken. The simplest way to set a specific GPU is to disable the dGPU when you wish to remain on the more power efficient iGPU.

The best way to achieve this is to boot to Recovery (or Single User Mode if the dGPU refuses to function at all) and run the following command:

nvram FA4CE28D-B62F-4C99-9CC3-6815686E30F9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00

This will disable the dGPU and allow the iGPU to function in Big Sur. Note that external display outputs are directly routed to the dGPU and therefore can no longer be used. Solutions such as DisplayLink Adapters (opens new window) can work around this limitation, however, note that you'll need to use older drivers (5.2.6):

Note: This driver only provides partial support in macOS, full graphics acceleration is not currently available on displays driven by DisplayLink.

# Erratic Colours on ATI TeraScale 2 GPUs (HD5000/HD6000)

Resolved with OpenCore Legacy Patcher v0.4.2

Legacy Fix (prior to 0.4.2)

Due to an odd bug with ATI's TeraScale 2 GPUs, many users will experience erratic/strobing colours once finished installing accelerated patches and rebooting into macOS. The issue stems from an incorrect assumption in the GPU drivers where it will enforce the Billion Colour space on your display. To fix, simply force your Display into a lower color depth such as Million Colours.

Applications that can set color depth are:

# Unable to allow Safari Extensions

Due to a bug in the legacy acceleration patches, users won't be able to enable Safari Extensions.

The following tool can be used to work-around this issue:

# Cannot Login on 2011 15" and 17" MacBook Pros

By default, OpenCore Legacy Patcher will assume MacBookPro8,2/3 have a faulty dGPU and disable acceleration. This is the safest option for most users as enabling dGPU acceleration on faulty Macs will result in failed booting.

However, if your machine does not have the dGPU disabled via NVRAM, you'll experience a login loop. To work around this is quite simple:

  1. Boot macOS in Single User Mode
    • Press Cmd+S in OpenCore's menu when you turn the Mac on
  2. When the command line prompt appears, enter the dGPU disabler argument (at the bottom)
  3. Reboot and patched macOS should work normally
  4. If you still want to use the dGPU, run OpenCore Legacy Patcher and enable TS2 Acceleration from settings. Go to Patcher Settings -> Developer Settings -> Set TeraScale 2 Accel, then root patch again.
  5. Either Reset NVRAM or set gpu-power-prefs to zeros to re-enable the dGPU
# Forces GMUX to use iGPU only (ie. disable dGPU)
nvram FA4CE28D-B62F-4C99-9CC3-6815686E30F9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00
# To reset, simply write zeros or NVRAM Reset your Mac
nvram FA4CE28D-B62F-4C99-9CC3-6815686E30F9:gpu-power-prefs=%00%00%00%00

# Black Boxes on HD3000 iGPUs

A somewhat strange issue on Intel HD3000-based Macs, on 3rd party displays sometimes UI elements may become black and unreadable. To resolve, select either the generic Display or Display P3 Color Profiles in Display Settings.

  • Mainly applicable for HDMI Displays, DVI and DisplayPort are generally unaffected.
  • If you're inside Setup Assistant, press Cmd + Option + Control + T to launch Terminal. From there, run open /System/Applications/System\ Preferences.app
  • Issue has spread to more Macs with macOS Ventura, including MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros
Default Color Profile Display/Display P3 Profile

# Cannot Pair Bluetooth Devices

In macOS Ventura, hover states may not function correctly which results in the "Connect" button not appearing in System Settings. To resolve:

  1. Enable Keyboard Navigation in System Settings -> Keyboard
  2. Tab + space over Bluetooth devices in System Settings -> Bluetooth
  3. Pair button should appear

For more information, see ASentientBot's post (opens new window).

⟵ Troubleshooting ⟶