Is Hackintosh still a thing?

[Fender2112]

Years ago, before Apple introduced its first M1 chips, I built several hackintosh computers. It was a fun project and I learned a little bit about computers.

My question is this, are hackintosh builds still a thing? Do folks still build PC's that run MacOS?

 

[maflynn]

Barely feasible, once Apple drops Intel from their code base, its largely dead - at least with current operating systems.

Personally, I think hackintoshes largely died once apple went to ARM. Also now that apple offers a M4 Mini for around 500 dollars there's really no reason to build one, you can easily get an actual Mac for a lot less then what it would cost you to build a hackintosh

 

[pshufd]

It is still a thing but it's work and I think that updates can be a problem. If you want a specific hardware configuration or have a computer hanging around that you want to run macOS on, you can give it a try.

If you have modern hardware, then it's often easier to just run it in a virtual machine off Windows or Linux. That way you have access to your native OS and macOS.

 

[Daydog]

I have a Mac Studio m4. But I still love tinkering with my hackintosh. be missed when no more support for intel 🙁

 

[erihp]

This is the end. Tahoe is the final version to support x86 hardware.

Once they drop support for x86 in the next release, you wont be able to run MacOS.

Unlesssss someone figures out how to run it on other ARM processors (pretty unlikely!).

 

[maflynn]

Unlesssss someone figures out how to run it on other ARM processors (pretty unlikely!).

But why would you? In all honesty, Apple has Qualcomm beat in nearly every area.

 

[erihp]

But why would you? In all honesty, Apple has Qualcomm beat in nearly every area.

Hackers will hack. Mostly for the challenge it seems!

 

[maflynn]

Hackers will hack. Mostly for the challenge it seems!

Perhaps, but at some point the rewards don't match the time and cost of the endeavor.

Prior to apple silicon, hackintoshs were general accepted by a largers swath of people, now as you mentioned its more closely aligned with hackers (and hobbyists)

 

[drrich2]

Prior to apple silicon, hackintoshs were general accepted by a largers swath of people, now as you mentioned its more closely aligned with hackers (and hobbyists)

What were the main goals of people going the hackintosh route? Other than techie tinkering.

I would think possibilities might include...

1.) More powerful CPU options at lower cost.
2.) More RAM module slots without having to pay the cost of a Mac Pro.
3.) A tower unit with multiple drive bays without paying for a Mac Pro.
4.) I don't know whether more powerful external GPUs functioned with them.
5.) Getting their system cheaper.
6.) I suppose if you had a tower with multiple internal drives, you could install MacOS on one and Windows on another, so you'd have in essence 2 computers in one box without needing emulation or the old Bootcamp route.

These days, a person can get a powerful Mac CPU with a Mac Mini (M4 or M4 Pro). With system-on-a-chip, user upgradable RAM isn't workable. I doubt external GPUs are, either. That said, there are options for expansion.

For extensive ports, an external dock.

For multiple drives, either stand-alone external SSD drives (USB-C 10-Gbps or Thunderbolt 3, USB-4 or Thunderbolt 5/USB-4 V2), or what amounts to a NAS-like DAS (direct attached storage) 'box' with multiple discs (possibly in a RAID array) like an OWC Thunderbay 4 or Terramaster D8 Hybrid HDD/NVME enclosure (10-Gbps USB-C). Or, for that matter, a NAS.

 

[keksikuningas]

Some day in the future, it would be fun to run macOS on an Ampere chip with 128 cores.

 

[b0fh666]

I had one running until recently, HP notebook with Mojave. Last month I did replace it with linux, too much 'software that would not run because OS too old' going on.

 

[pshufd]

What were the main goals of people going the hackintosh route? Other than techie tinkering.

I would think possibilities might include...

1.) More powerful CPU options at lower cost.
2.) More RAM module slots without having to pay the cost of a Mac Pro.
3.) A tower unit with multiple drive bays without paying for a Mac Pro.
4.) I don't know whether more powerful external GPUs functioned with them.
5.) Getting their system cheaper.
6.) I suppose if you had a tower with multiple internal drives, you could install MacOS on one and Windows on another, so you'd have in essence 2 computers in one box without needing emulation or the old Bootcamp route.

These days, a person can get a powerful Mac CPU with a Mac Mini (M4 or M4 Pro). With system-on-a-chip, user upgradable RAM isn't workable. I doubt external GPUs are, either. That said, there are options for expansion.

For extensive ports, an external dock.

For multiple drives, either stand-alone external SSD drives (USB-C 10-Gbps or Thunderbolt 3, USB-4 or Thunderbolt 5/USB-4 V2), or what amounts to a NAS-like DAS (direct attached storage) 'box' with multiple discs (possibly in a RAID array) like an OWC Thunderbay 4 or Terramaster D8 Hybrid HDD/NVME enclosure (10-Gbps USB-C). Or, for that matter, a NAS.

Being able to run macOS on a laptop design that you prefer to the current Apple lineup.

If you want a 7 or 10 inch PC to run macOS or you want to run macOS on a two-pound laptop or an eight pound laptop, it's a nice option.

 

[sevoneone]

Other than it being a novelty/curiosity going forward, no.

My first Hackintosh was a Dual Core Celeron E1200 + open box Intel LGA 775 motherboard box I managed to slap together using other spare/used parts for around $150 total while I was in college in 2008. It was basically an oversized, duct taped together Mac mini of the time equivalent. It took me like 2 weekends down online rabbit holes, and burning multiple custom OS X Leopard install DVDs over and over to get it working. It was stupid unstable and any small change could send it into an unbootable mess at first, but over about a year new tools, better processes and resources came around and it became rock solid: $150 vs. $599.

That was the first of 4 hacks I built. Each was a secondary home desktop to my primary MacBook Pro. The last one in 2017 though was a full on workstation built for video editing, basically an overbuilt 27" iMac for 1/3 the price...

In 2022 it came down to upgrading the the hack or buying a refurbished M1 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM. The mini won in every way from a cost to performance perspective.

When the M4 came out, Apple's trade-in for the M1 with 16GB of memory made the cost of the base M4 a little more than $230.

The value proposition has been gone for a long time and the end of support is closing the door.

 

[Paul1964]

I've got a copy of Sonoma running in VMWare. It works but performance it pretty poor on my pretty powerful Windows gaming laptop (32GB Intel 13900HX and mobile 4080)

 

[kvic]

Years ago, before Apple introduced its first M1 chips, I built several hackintosh computers. It was a fun project and I learned a little bit about computers.

For hardware enthusiasts, Hackintosh enlightens their understanding of how MacOS works on a commodity platform like x86_64. So believe it or not MacOS on x86_64 is more fun to tinker and optimise because x86_64 know-how is pretty much public and in abundance.

My question is this, are hackintosh builds still a thing? Do folks still build PC's that run MacOS?

In the past 5+ years, Hackintosh has been made dumb simple. Right now doing a brand new bare-metal build for MacOS is probably in very few people's mind given MacOS on x86_64 ends with Tahoe release.

However, during the same 5+ years, MacOS as a virtual machine on Linux has become fashionable. Performance is great as long as you pass through a GPU to MacOS VM. Stability is rock solid. So certainly not a poor, belated idea even if you only do it now. You still get a solid use of 3-5 years as Mac while the same hardware is used for Linux and perhaps additionally for Windows gaming.

 

[pshufd]

However, during the same 5+ years, MacOS as a virtual machine on Linux has become fashionable. Performance is great as long as you pass through a GPU to MacOS VM. Stability is rock solid. So certainly not a poor, belated idea even if you only do it now. You still get a solid use of 3-5 years as Mac while the same hardware is used for Linux and perhaps additionally for Windows gaming.

This is what I do. WSL2 -> Ubuntu -> QEMU -> macOS. You can find lots of YouTube videos on how to do this and it gets you 90% of the way (the videos always leave out a few things) but you can have the convenience of Windows and macOS. I do not have GPU passthrough but I'm not running games. GPU performance is fine for what I do without it.

Or you could just run Linux on your PC and then do QEMU -> macOS. I am quite happy not running Tahoe on a VM - that may even be a feature.

 

[maflynn]

owever, during the same 5+ years, MacOS as a virtual machine on Linux has become fashionable.

I would think the only people doing this, will be someone who has a need to use a specific Mac application, not the majority. The poplation size of folks embracing hackintoshes have shrunk incredibly, especially given the price point of the M4 Mini. If you need a Mac to run something, the mini offers an inexpensive option for most people.

 

[pshufd]

I would think the only people doing this, will be someone who has a need to use a specific Mac application, not the majority. The poplation size of folks embracing hackintoshes have shrunk incredibly, especially given the price point of the M4 Mini. If you need a Mac to run something, the mini offers an inexpensive option for most people.

Where it's useful for me is in getting different form factors for laptops.

I'm running a Mac Studio and iMac Pro on the desktop right now.

People may repurpose older Windows PCs to run a Hackintosh so that they don't have to buy Apple hardware but I find that the performance of Hackintosh on recent hardware is really great compared to something older than 2021. There's graphics stuttering on older hardware that goes away with newer hardware. It may be that GPU passthrough fixes this and it's not something that I've ever looked into.

 

[maflynn]

People may repurpose older Windows PCs to run a Hackintosh

I just don't see that in 2026, if an older Pc is going to be repurposed, its most likely will get the Linux treatment. I hear that all of the time. I haven't seen much talk about turning an older PC into a hackintosh for several years now

 

[pshufd]

I just don't see that in 2026, if an older Pc is going to be repurposed, its most likely will get the Linux treatment. I hear that all of the time. I haven't seen much talk about turning an older PC into a hackintosh for several years now

There are folks that I run into asking how to get 2008-2013 Macs working. These are often teenagers that don't have money but they do have hardware. The US isn't the world and Macs are a lot more expensive in other parts of the world relative to income.

I've setup my 2020 Windows PC to run macOS. The experience is usable but not great. I'm fairly often reminded of what people will put up with in terms of performance on systems. One of the question I see on Reddit is how do I keep my 2010-2015 iMac running. A 2020 PC running macOS is going to run much better than those systems.

I hadn't done a Hackintosh in many years after getting my Studio. What made me give it another try? The ease of doing it with Linux and QEMU. If you take the pain out of trying to get it set up, people will give it a shot if they know about it.

 

[kvic]

This is what I do. WSL2 -> Ubuntu -> QEMU -> macOS.

Interesting, I think this is a "double (or perhaps triple) virtualisation". Ubuntu is run as a VM on WSL2. Depends on setup, Windows itself could be running as a VM already. Then macOS runs as VM on Ubuntu.

MacOS desktop experience should be fine given today's speedy hardware. Nested virtualisation probably should be avoided if performance is desirable.

Or you could just run Linux on your PC and then do QEMU -> macOS. I am quite happy not running Tahoe on a VM - that may even be a feature.

This is much better IMO. Only one level of virtualisation. Passing through a MacOS compatible GPU to the VM is mandatory for bare-metal like Mac experience. People won't be able to tell apart from a Mac VM and a bare-metal Mac. The experience is this great.

In the VM, 1T CPU performance loss is about 5% only. nT performance lost is less than 2%. Any hardware passed through is same as bare-metal experience.

I would think the only people doing this, will be someone who has a need to use a specific Mac application, not the majority.

Hackintosh was never for the majority of Mac users. It was always for the 5% perhaps - those people who love MacOS most and the most tech-savvy users in Mac user base. So same logics follow for MacOS as VM on top of Linux. And these users are likely multi-OS users anyway. The approach is one machine that rules them all _at the same time_ not conventional dual/triple boots.

For those who tried, they would hope MacOS on x86_64 would last forever. The prospect is grim. As I said above, another 3-5 years of solid use is for sure.