7.5 KiB
Working Around Legacy Acceleration Issues
- Downloading older non-Metal Apps
- Unable to run Zoom
- Unable to grant special permissions to apps (ie. Camera Access to Zoom)
- Keyboard Backlight broken
- Photos and Maps Apps Heavily Distorted
- Cannot press "Done" when editing a Sidebar Widget
- Wake from sleep heavily distorted on AMD/ATI in macOS 11.3 and newer
- Unable to switch GPUs on 2011 15" and 17" MacBook Pros
- Erratic Colours on ATI TeraScale 2 GPUs (HD5000/HD6000)
- Unable to allow Safari Extensions
The below page is for users experiencing issues with their overall usage of macOS Big Sur / macOS Monterey and the Legacy Graphics Acceleration patches. Note that the following GPUs currently do not have acceleration support in Big Sur / Monterey:
- Intel 3rd and 4th Gen - GMA series
For those unfamiliar with what is considered a non-Metal GPU, see below chart:
::: details macOS GPU Chart
| Graphics Vendor | Architecture | Series | Supports Metal |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATI | TeraScale 1 | HD2000 - HD4000 | No |
| ^^ | TeraScale 2 | HD5000 - HD6000 | ^^ |
| AMD | GCN (and newer) | HD7000+ | Yes |
| Nvidia | Tesla | 8000GT - GT300 | No |
| ^^ | Fermi | GT400 - GT500 | ^^ |
| ^^ | Kepler | GT600 - GT700 | Yes |
| Intel | GMA | GMA900 - GMA3000 | No |
| ^^ | Iron Lake | HD series | ^^ |
| ^^ | Sandy Bridge | HD3000 | ^^ |
| ^^ | Ivy Bridge (and newer) | HD4000 | Yes |
:::
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)
With version 0.2.5, this issue should be full resolved
::: details 0.2.4 and older Work-Around
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 entires in System Preferences. To work around this, we recommend users install tccplus to manage permissions.
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 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 forcing the color output of their monitor from Billions to Millions of colors helped greatly. Apps easily allowing this customization are SwitchResX, ResXreme and EasyRes.
Cannot press "Done" when editing a Sidebar Widget
To work around this, simply press Tab to hover over and press spacebar to simulate a click.
Note: This work-around doesn't seem to work in macOS 11.3 and newer
Wake from sleep heavily distorted on AMD/ATI in macOS 11.3 and newer
Unfortunately a very well known issue the community is investigating, current known solution is to simply downgrade to 11.2.3 or older until a proper fix can be found. Additionally logging out and logging 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 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 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 a DisplayLink Adapters can work around this limitation in theory. However, currently the proprietary DisplayLink driver refuses to function on legacy-patched systems, either resulting in a windowserver crash loop or no output at all.
Erratic Colours on ATI TeraScale 2 GPUs (HD5000/HD6000)
Due to an odd bug with ATI's TeraScale 2 GPUs, many users will experience erratic/strobing colours once finished installing and rebooting into the accelerated patches. 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 a Million Colours.
Applications that can set color depth are:
Unable to allow Safari Extensions
Due to an bug on the legacy acceleration patches, users won't be able to enable Safari Extensions
This tool can be used to work-around this issue: