I have Catalina on my 2017 MacBook Pro and the features like find my and new reminders are nice. Idc about the separating iTunes since I just canceled Apple Music in favor of Spotify. However I don’t see any real reason to switch from Mojave to Catalina on my desktop. You can downgrade your MacOs using two ways- 1.You could recover your Mac as it was when you were running Mojave from a Time Machine backup. Plug your Time Machine disk into your Mac.
This guide is meant for HP Probook/Elitebook/Zbook but it can be used for all hackintoshes. The only difference is that you have to get all kexts by yourself.
If you own the same laptop, you can use my EFI partition from github.com.
Before upgrade
Backup
Always make a backup before you update/upgrade. Time Machine backup is not enough for Hackintosh, bit-by-bit backup is recommended. I do my backup using 2 hard drives and a USB stick with macOS Installer on it, because I don’t want to pay for Carbon Copy Cloner (stay tuned for my guide How to clone disk using APFS snapshots)).
I connect both my hard drives (using SATA or USB, the only difference is the speed) and boot into the installer.
You have to be very careful not to override your primary hard drive or to format it!
On the main screen, launch Disk Utility. Format the spare hard drive to have to empty. Then close the Disk Utility and run Terminal from Utilities menu.
Identify disk number of your primary and secondary disk.
Here my primary disk is /dev/disk0 and secondary is /dev/disk2. We will reference these drives as /dev/rdisk0 and /dev/rdisk2.
Now we have to just wait till it’s finished.
Update essential kexts
Boot into the OS and update and install kexts from Rehabman’s repo according to the guide. Namely sections Updates to the patch repositories and System updates.
Hackintosh Mojave To Catalina Update
Upgrade
DON’T FORGET TO DO A BACKUP!
Now you can start the upgrade from the Mac App Store.
Post-upgrade
Install kexts from Rehabman’s repo according to the guide again.
With my setup, my Wifi was working but the Bluetooth was not. Rehabman is currently not active so I migrated to acidanthera’s BT kexts (Mieze’s patches included).
If you install hackintosh by yourself, download latest BT kexts from Releases page and copy BrcmPatchRAM3.kext, BrcmFirmwareData.kext and BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext) to /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/. If you prefer installing kexts to /Library/Extensions, copy BrcmPatchRAM3.kext, BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext and BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext instead. **Don’t forget to remove old kexts (such as BrcmPatchRAM2.kext, etc).
Update: You can use my EFI folder if you have the same model (choose the branch according to the version you are upgrading to).
Since macOS Catalina, system partition is read-only, you have to mount it first as read-write:
Then rebuild kext cache:
Also, don’t forget to disable hibernation (it can enable with the update):
That’s it, everything is working for me (except the mute button with builtin speakers, but that’s a story for another time).
This guide is meant for HP Probook/Elitebook/Zbook but it can be used for all hackintoshes. The only difference is that you have to get all kexts by yourself.
If you own the same laptop, you can use my EFI partition from github.com.
Before upgrade
Backup
Always make a backup before you update/upgrade. Time Machine backup is not enough for Hackintosh, bit-by-bit backup is recommended. I do my backup using 2 hard drives and a USB stick with macOS Installer on it, because I don’t want to pay for Carbon Copy Cloner (stay tuned for my guide How to clone disk using APFS snapshots)).
I connect both my hard drives (using SATA or USB, the only difference is the speed) and boot into the installer.
You have to be very careful not to override your primary hard drive or to format it!
On the main screen, launch Disk Utility. Format the spare hard drive to have to empty. Then close the Disk Utility and run Terminal from Utilities menu.
Identify disk number of your primary and secondary disk.
Here my primary disk is /dev/disk0 and secondary is /dev/disk2. We will reference these drives as /dev/rdisk0 and /dev/rdisk2.
Now we have to just wait till it’s finished.
Update essential kexts
Boot into the OS and update and install kexts from Rehabman’s repo according to the guide. Namely sections Updates to the patch repositories and System updates.
Upgrade
DON’T FORGET TO DO A BACKUP!
Now you can start the upgrade from the Mac App Store.
Post-upgrade
Install kexts from Rehabman’s repo according to the guide again.
With my setup, my Wifi was working but the Bluetooth was not. Rehabman is currently not active so I migrated to acidanthera’s BT kexts (Mieze’s patches included).
If you install hackintosh by yourself, download latest BT kexts from Releases page and copy BrcmPatchRAM3.kext, BrcmFirmwareData.kext and BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext) to /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other/. If you prefer installing kexts to /Library/Extensions, copy BrcmPatchRAM3.kext, BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext and BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext instead. **Don’t forget to remove old kexts (such as BrcmPatchRAM2.kext, etc).
Update: You can use my EFI folder if you have the same model (choose the branch according to the version you are upgrading to).
Since macOS Catalina, system partition is read-only, you have to mount it first as read-write:
Then rebuild kext cache:
Hackintosh Downgrade Catalina To Mojave
Also, don’t forget to disable hibernation (it can enable with the update):
Hackintosh Mojave To Catalina Converter
That’s it, everything is working for me (except the mute button with builtin speakers, but that’s a story for another time).