A hackintosh (, a portmanteau of "hack" and "Macintosh"), sometimes referred to as OSx86, is a computer that runs Apple's operating system macOS on computer hardware that is not authorized for the purpose by Apple. This is due to the software license for macOS only permitting its use on in-house hardware built by Apple itself, in this case the Mac line.
Although the practice of "Hackintoshing" has existed since the 1980s, a new wave of "Hackintoshing" began as a result of Apple's 2005 transition to Intel processors, away from PowerPC. From that transition to the early 2020s transition to Apple silicon, Mac computers used the same x86 computer architecture as many other desktop PCs, laptops, and servers, meaning that in principle, the code making up macOS systems and software can be run on alternative platforms with minimal compatibility issues.
Commercial circumvention of the methods Apple uses to prevent macOS from being installed on non-Apple hardware is restricted in the United States under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but specific changes to the law regarding the concept of jailbreaking have placed circumvention methods like these into a legal grey area.
Overview Benefits of "Hackintoshing" can include cost (using older or cheaper commodity hardware), ease of repair and piecemeal upgrade, and freedom to use customized choices of components that are not available (or not available together) in the branded Apple products. macOS can also be run on several non-Apple virtualization platforms, although such systems are not usually described as Hackintoshes. Hackintosh laptops are sometimes referred to as "HackBooks".
Apple's software license for macOS only permits the software's use on "Apple-branded Systems" However, because many still-supported Macintosh computers use Intel-based hardware, it is often possible to run the software on other Intel-based PCs, with only a few technical hurdles. Notably, companies such as Psystar have attempted to release products using macOS on non-Apple machines, though many Hackintosh systems are designed solely by macOS enthusiasts of various hacking forums and communities.
In 2020, Apple began to move to ARM64-based Apple silicon processors, and in 2025, the company announced that macOS Tahoe would be the last version of macOS to run on x86-64 Intel-based Macs, meaning that any version of macOS released after Tahoe will not be able to be installed on any Intel-based hardware.
History As early as mid-1988, people have been making Macintosh clones. In 1989 an emulator called A-Max was released for the Amiga that allowed users to run Mac OS on that platform.
Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) On June 6, 2005, Apple announced its plans to transition to Intel x86 processors at their Worldwide Developers Conference and made available a prototype Intel-based Mac to selected developers at a cost of $999 (). Efforts immediately began to attempt to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, but developers quickly found themselves with an error message saying that the PC hardware configurations were not supported.
On January 10, 2006, Apple released 10.4.4 with the first generation of Intel-based Macs, the iMac and the MacBook Pro. These machines used Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) platform firmware instead of the older style BIOS found on most x86 motherboards at the time. On February 14, 2006, an initial "hack" of v10.4.4 was released on the Internet by a programmer with the pseudonym crg92. Within hours Apple released the 10.4.5 update, which was then hacked by the same author within two weeks. On April 3, 2006, Apple released their 10.4.6 update and again patches were released within two weeks that allowed users to install most of this update on non-Apple computers, although this did not include the updated kernel in 10.4.6. In June 2006, an updated MacBook Pro was released for the 10.4.7 update for non-Apple computers using the 10.4.4 kernel.
Up to the release of the 10.4.8 update, all OSx86 patches used the 10.4.4 kernel with the rest of the operating system at version 10.4.8. However, the newer frameworks relied on the newer kernels and this led to users of 10.4.8 encountering many problems. Apple also started making more use of SSE3 instructions on their hardware making it even more difficult for users with CPUs supporting only SSE2 (such as older Pentium 4s) to get a fully compatible system running. To solve this problem, hackers from the community released kernels where those instructions were emulated with SSE2 equivalents, although this produced a performance penalty.
Throughout the years, many "distributions" ("distros") of Mac OS X were released for download over the Internet. These distros were copies of the Mac OS X installer disc modified to include additional components necessary to make the OS run on non-Apple hardware. A prominent member of the community, JaS, released many distros of Mac OS X Tiger containing patched kernels. Some other popular distros are iATKOS, Kalyway, iPC and iDeneb. Distros have fallen out of favour as the OSx86 community grew, as new bootloaders were developed that made it possible to use actual copies of the OS X Installer, known as vanilla installations.
Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)
As early as v10.5 build 9A466 the community has maintained a version of Leopard that can run on non-Apple hardware. A hacker by the handle of BrazilMac created one of the earliest patching processes that made it convenient for users to install onto 3rd party hardware by using a legally obtained, retail version of Apple . This simplification quickly made the BrazilMac patch and its later revisions the most popular choice for many distros. Five of the most popular builds go by the name JaS, Kalyway, iATKOS, iPC and iDeneb – although more recently these builds are on the way out as the Boot-132 method (described below) gains popularity. However, all of these compilations rely on the work of kernel hackers made by Lorem (build 9A466), SynthetiX (builds 9A499, 9A527 and 9A559), ToH (builds 9A581, 9B13, and 9B18) and more recently a group calling themselves StageXNU (now called Voodoo) (Darwin 9.4.0). Their contributions trickled down into the various Mac OSx86 installers, readily available on the Internet. They continue to be refined and updated builds released, not just to maintain compatibility with Apple releases but also to support an ever-increasing number of third-party components. The OSx86 community has been quick to make the necessary modifications to enable Apple's latest releases to run on non-Apple hardware. Within hours of Leopard's release, an AMD/Intel SSE2/3 Kernel Patcher was created that removed the HPET requirement from an original untouched mach_kernel file, a core component of the Mac OS.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6)
When Mac OS X Snow Leopard was released, Russian hacker netkas created a version of Chameleon that can boot Mac OS X v10.6. The main problem was that many people were forced to modify DSDT or use kexts due to some specific issues. As soon as possible modbin and dmitrik released test versions of kernel that allow to boot Snow Leopard on AMD machines. Stable XNU kernels for v10.6 were released by Qoopz and Pcj. There are some popular builds based on Retail by the name Universal (Intel only), Hazard, and iAtkos. Since v10.6.2 Nawcom, Qoopz, and Andy Vandijck have been working on Legacy kernel for unsupported CPUs.
Mac OS X Lion (10.7) When Apple released the Developer Preview 1, a Russian Hackintosh developer usr-sse2 was the first who created a method to install Lion. The method consists of deploying Mac OS X v10.7 image on a flash drive, and booting from it via XPC UEFI Bootloader (See DUET below). After some changes were made to the Chameleon source code, it became possible to boot Lion with an updated version of Chameleon. After a while Dmitrik also known as Bronzovka had luck with creating a kernel that supported AMD systems; after a few months (10.7.3 V2 With AMD Support) and iAtkos L2 (10.7.2 Only Intel) were released.
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) Shortly after the release of Developer Preview 1, some unknown developers managed to install this version of OS X to their PC by using a modified version of the Chameleon Bootloader. This version was released via the main project starting at version r1997 to the general public. Since the retail release of Mountain Lion several users have reported successful setups using installers purchased from the Mac App Store, along with updated versions of Chameleon and other tools including distros. Niresh's Distro (10.8 Intel only) was first released and then was updated to 10.8.2 (With AMD and Intel) and 10.8.5 (With UEFI Support, AMD and Intel Support) versions; iAtkos ML2 was released after Niresh's Release.
OS X Mavericks (10.9) Multiple new kernels for Hackintosh 10.9 are in the works, although there still are minor issues with most of them. Most of these kernels aim to allow users to run Mavericks on AMD and older Intel CPUs, which lack certain instruction sets of the latest Intel CPUs. Significant efforts have been made to emulate instruction sets like SSSE3, which are not present on AMD K10-based CPUs, and older Intel CPUs, like the Intel Core Duo. AMD's latest CPUs, from the 'Bulldozer' architecture onwards, contain almost all the latest instruction sets, and hence, some kernels with full SSE4 support have also been released. After two months, Niresh's Distro was released for Mavericks, which supports AMD CPUs and latest Intel CPUs. It also has a custom kernel that allows Intel Atom processors to boot into Mavericks. Niresh's was the only free distro that was released for Mavericks, since the iAtkos Team decided to release their Mavericks distro for specific hardware on donation basis.
OS X Yosemite (10.10) After the initial release of OS X Yosemite 10.10 BETA, various developers took on the role of updating their bootloaders for the system. Members of OSx86 forum InsanelyMac set to update the EFI Bootloader Chameleon for this new OS release. Some time later, Niresh (an independent OSx86 developer) released a standalone tool known as Yosemite Zone, based on Tora Chi, Bronya and DeeKay's AMD Kernel, which would automatically install the new OS and other various features on a non-Apple device with minimal input. This method consisted of torrenting an OS X 10.10 DMG onto a USB flash drive with MacPwn Vanilla Installation. Unibeast was updated to support Yosemite, and a distribution of Yosemite Zone was released with AMD processor support. In addition, DeeKay's graphics patch gave support for accelerated graphics on Intel's Built-In GPU HD 4400 which was unsupported on ASUS laptops. A vanilla installation of Yosemite is possible via Insanelymac's Pandora Box Beta 2.0 and UniBeast. This type installation uses as few kexts (drivers) as possible in addition to using an unaltered version of the OS X installation app, and is preferred over distributions.
OS X El Capitan (10.11) Both Clover and Chameleon were updated to be compatible with El Capitan. Unibeast and MacPwn were updated to support El Capitan as well, since El Capitan, Unibeast (and Multibeast) use the Clover bootloader instead of Chimera (a Chameleon-based bootloader).
macOS Sierra (10.12) Clover and Chameleon were updated to be compatible with Sierra. UniBeast, Pandora Box and MacPwn were updated to support it and a distribution of Sierra Zone (10.12.3) was released with AMD processor support.
macOS High Sierra (10.13) Clover, MacPwn and UniBeast were updated to support it. A distro of High Sierra Zone by Hackintosh Zone (10.13) was released with AMD Processor support including Ryzen CPUs.
macOS Mojave (10.14)