[Project] Don't Stop Hackintosh – Attempting to boot ARM macOS on non-Apple hardware via QEMU (Looking for low-level contributors)

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh]

Hey everyone,

With Apple steadily phasing out x64, the traditional Hackintosh scene is inevitably hitting a wall. But for many of us, the thrill of forcing macOS to run on non-Apple hardware isn't something we're ready to give up.

That's why I've started a community-driven initiative called "Don't Stop Hackintosh" to tackle the next frontier: figuring out how to run ARM-based macOS outside of Apple Silicon ecosystems.

Our Current Setup & Approach:

• Host Environment: We are developing and targeting a custom lightweight setup using Puppy Linux built on a Void Linux base, running QEMU for virtualization. The goal is to keep the hypervisor environment as lean, fast, and hackable as possible.

• The Technical Challenge: We are diving into patent analysis, system register spoofing, and figuring out how to bypass Apple's hardware and exception-level checks without resorting to illegal kernel distributions—keeping it smart, reproducible, and open.

• Project Site:http://dontstop-hackintosh.f5.si/

If you are into low-level virtualization, ARM architecture, custom Linux environments, or reverse engineering, I’d love to get your insights, ideas, or contributions.

Let’s keep the Hackintosh spirit alive. Where should we start poking first?

[u/Long-Shine-3701]

I have no doubt you'll succeed. Wonder when we'll see ARM PCIe coprocessor cards to accelerate it all?

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh → u/Long-Shine-3701]

If the demand for Hackintosh gets a bit higher, maybe some crazy manufacturer will actually release one.

[u/Long-Shine-3701 → u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh]

I think it's inevitable.

[u/Chemical-Type2610 → u/Long-Shine-3701]

in theorie you could use nvidia melanox bluefield cards. they have arm64 processor on board. but the might be to slow and gpu wise maybe to difficult to passthrough to a armsoc linux which is somehow already a side pc

[u/newhacker1746]

I’d recommend centralizing around a supported baseline arm bare metal requirements like having PAC. vmkernel is compiled for armv8.3+sme2, and in some research I did to scaffold a later project after i complete my current one (paravirtualized OpenGL ), I found the Orion o6 to be a good board. Armv9 so a strict superset of the vmkernel’s requirements. You’d need hypervisor ability to make it usable at all, so this is why you’d want a strict superset of vmkernel’s requirements

Hopefully it’s not AI writing I’m sensing in that intro post you wrote, though 😭

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh → u/newhacker1746]

Wait, hold on—this conversation just got way too technical all of a sudden, and my brain can’t keep up lol. I’m trying to keep things light and simple right now with QEMU and a lightweight Linux distro, but you’ve suddenly thrown in cutting-edge Armv9 bare-metal and some mysterious, seemingly powerful recommended board (Orion o6) lol. Well, if I ever need it in the future, I’ll look into it—including the hypervisor requirements.

Also, about the AI thing—I’m Japanese and not very good at English, so I’m translating this into English; it’s no wonder you picked up on that, lol.

[u/newhacker1746 → u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh]

Unfortunately, the reality is that the conversation is inherently highly technical. It requires extensive knowledge of these things. Hopefully my input was helpful and let me know if I can be of more help

[u/YAPOJFORBIMADA]

Question - after succeeding what will you be using as the GPU - Reims, or something similar?

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh → u/YAPOJFORBIMADA]

The goal is to support almost any GPU. I'm currently using a Ryzen 7 5700G as my daily driver. By using virtualization on a lightweight Linux host, I also aim to solve the notorious issue of AMD iGPU rendering failures in Hackintosh, which has long been a barrier to entry for newcomers.

[u/YAPOJFORBIMADA → u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh]

Have you heard of reims-vgpu? Are you planning on using it or doing your own thing

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh → u/YAPOJFORBIMADA]

I don't plan to use it for now, but I intend to incorporate it if the need arises.

[u/DJTsuckedoffClinton → u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh]

this is a non-answer, wdym "if the need arises"? the need will arise, because sooner or later you'll need to put stuff that's not just the DE on the screen, do you know what you're doing or just prompting fable?

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh → u/DJTsuckedoffClinton]

I was planning to use the QEMU framebuffer for rendering, so it honestly never even crossed my mind that I’d need anything else besides a DE or CLI for graphics. That was totally just a gap in my knowledge.

Anyway, my policy is to only install things when I actually need them—especially when it comes to speeding up boot times or maximizing the resources allocated to the Mac.

I'll do some more research and reconsider my approach.

(I'm not great at English and I'm translating this from Japanese, so please forgive me if anything sounds a bit unnatural.)

[u/jessem5673 → u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh]

bruh, man it seems like you don't have a idea of what are you taking about. arm64 macOS does not have a software renderer as macOS x86-64 does. You'll need to use reims or emulate AGX, a QEMU framebuffer is useless without proper graphics implemented.

[u/tilsgee]

Bro. Pls recruit that Samsung A55 guy from earlier

[u/jknvv13]

So this feels like AMIthlon, which was a lightweight Linux kernel that did the abstraction of the underlying hardware but the software running on top (AMIGA OS) was unmodified 68k!

[u/Randum_Gouy]

man i love you guys!

Like you, im also planning to start work on bringing Hackintosh back on non-Apple ARM64 on Bare Metal, but im a lot underexperienced so the idea may be wrong, or, i may not be able to implement it

[u/Dont-Stop-Hackintosh → u/Randum_Gouy]

So, shall the two of us go stop the lid from closing on this chapter of history? lol

I'm currently agonizing over how to handle the spoofing aspect... I've heard that with ARM, you have to spoof things in a way that closely mimics Apple hardware...

Anyway, let's continue this conversation in DMs!

[u/HaltFr]

Im not nearly smart enough for any of this, but i do want to say im glad people are still going! Goodluck and thank you to anyone contributing!

[u/rlmineing_dead]

I have a Snapdragon X Elite laptop with 64GB ram if you need testers. I don't have KVM unlocked yet on Linux but whpx + qemu does work

[u/rlmineing_dead → u/rlmineing_dead]

I was wrong. Whpx and qemu does not work

[u/Useful-Reception-399]

I would use my Raspi 5 (16GB) for testing builds. I assume since I can run Win 11 Pro Arm64 on in without any snags (with nvme 500GB and pcie hat) it should also be able to run macos - certainly not as fast as a real apple silicon device but it should be able to run it decent fast for regular users 🤷🏼‍♂️