I've been able to install macOS on the Lenovo ThinkPad P50 through OpenCore. This guide will go through the setup on how to get it working but will not include any files other than ACPI and parts of the config, you will have to do the work youself.

THIS GUIDE IS PROVIDED TO YOU FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. I AND ANYONE MENTIONED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN THIS GUIDE WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY HARM OR LOSS. BY FOLLOWING THIS GUIDE YOU AGREE TO TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING THAT COMES OUT FROM THIS GUIDE.

• Model: Lenovo ThinkPad P50 (20EN)
• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1505 v5 2.7Ghz Quad Core - Eight Threads CPU (vPro)
• GPUs:
  • Intel HD P530
  • Nvidia Quadro M2000M (Lenovo branded)
    • Will never work.
• RAM: 16GB+16GB 2133Mhz DDR4 (2 Slots filled from 4)
• Storage:
  • 512GB Samsung SSD 950 Pro NVMe M.2
    • macOS + Linux
  • 1TB Samsung SSD 970 Evo NVMe M.2
    • Windows
  • 1TB Sandisk SSD3D or whatever (good stuff) AHCI SATA
• WiFi Card: was Intel Wireless Dual Band 8360 (for vPro), replaced with Apple BCM94360CS2 DW1820A.
  • See the WiFi card options later in this guide
• Display: 1920 by 1080 (will check OEM later)
• Touch Panel: WACOM AES Digitizer (Touch + Pen)
• Audio: ALC298
• Thunderbolt 3 Chipset: DSL6540
  • Will probably not work, and I'm not looking into it, you have plenty of other ports.
• NO LTE modem
• OSes: macOS 10.15.x - Windows 10 - Ubuntu
• BIOS Version: 1.60

A lot of things are working fine as expected:

• CPU/GPU Power Management
  • <1W on idle
    • depends on running apps
• GPU Acceleration
  • QE/CI Support
  • HEVC decoding
• USB Type A ports
  • USB Power output up to 10W for iDevices
  • USB Charging port works in sleep at 10W
• WiFi/Bluetooth
  • AirDrop, Continuity, Handoff...
    • Requires proper WiFi card
    • May require extra configuration
• Audio In/Out
  • Microphones
  • Speakers (a bit low, investigating it)
  • Headphones
    • No mic input from it
• Display:
  • Brightness
  • Touch
    • As a fucking giant 15" trackpad
    • Pen input (no pressure support)
    • I disabled it because it's trash
• Keyboard
  • Hotkeys
• Trackpoint
• Trackpad
  • Full gestures (mac-like)
• Sleep/Wake/Shutdown/Reboot/Hibernation
• Startup Disk/Bootcamp reboot
  • From and to Windows/macOS
  • Follow OpenCore's documentation for that
• [Potentially] FileVault 2
• Camera
  • I disabled it in the USBMap, you will have to enable it on your own.
• Apple Services (AppStore, iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud...)
  • Given that you use properly generated SNs
• Battery reading
• Fan reading and control
• Hotkeys

• Fingerprint Reader (disabled with USBMap)
• ExpressCard (disabled in UEFI Setup)
• SDCard reader (the available driver causes crashes and isn't stable enough)
• Thunderbolt 3
  • There are some efforts to make it work
  • Will only work if you plug the device before booting up
  • I was successful to make it load up in OS but you will lose USB functionalities after wake, so it wasn't worth the effort, the DP-alt mode works
  • I do not own any Thunderbolt 3 device, so I only tested through force_power
  • Still causes KP occasionally
  • May require to flash a custom firmware in the Ti chip but I am not going to go that far
  • Not going to fix it
• Light Sensor (if there are any, I think some models may but mine doesn't have that)
  • If your model happen
• SmartCard (I don't have this feature, cannot test and probably will not work anyway)
• Any Display Output:
  • Yes YOU CANNOT output anything from the HDMI/DP/TB3 port
  • The HDMI port is linked to the TB3
  • TB3 and DP are both physically locked to the Nvidia card
  • The Nvidia GPU WILL NEVER WORK
  • The Nvidia GPU is disabled with ACPI
    • No outputs then
  • Solutions:
    • AirPlay
    • 3rd party screen streaming
    • USB to HDMI adapters (not tested)

• USB-C port
  • It works once and never again until you reboot
  • Plugging anything in it may cause KPs after a while, on sleep, on reboot/shutdown
  • Don't
• Power Consumption
  • For now the CPU eats about <1W which is pretty good
  • The battery life is quite bad (~5 hours on a good day)
  • Warms up the bottom of the laptop
  • If anyone has any idea of why that's happening, please open an Issue or make a PR
• DRM support -- not tested/fixed
  • I don't use iTunes/TV+
  • Netflix on Safari may not work (didn't test)
    • Works on Chrome/Firefox just fine
• Pen Pressure input, only works on 10.11 (you will have to do more work to get this running on 10.11, not covered here)
• to be filled when I remember something
• Hibernation (didn't test yet) It works

• Thunderbolt 3
• Better Power Management
• Pen Pressure (blame Apple on that)
• Fix the SDcard Reader
• Fix various issues that may or may not happen

Before installing macOS, you'll have to prepare your computer.

Make sure you're in UEFI mode, I'm not going to help you on legacy installs.

1. ⚠️ BACKUP EVERYTHING, I will not take responsibility of anything that happens to your data.

2. If you're dual booting with windows:

   1. Disable BitLocker if you have it enabled already.
   2. Download a disk partitioning tool (like Minitool Partition Wizard, EaseUS, Aomei...), I DO NOT recommend Gparted as it may break NTFS and can create partition overlapping if you're not careful (if you're ok with it and sure about it, go for it).
   3. Resize your C: partition to leave at least 60GB from the right (because windows will be broken if you resize from the other side)
      • In case there are any partitions after the free space, move them at the end of the Windows partition (usually it's Recovery)
      • In case the EFI partition is less than 200MB, make it larger by shrinking the windows partition from the side of the EFI by the amount you need to grow it and some more.
        • This is crucial as it will help use format it with APFS later on.
   4. Create an empty FAT32 partition in that free space (CRUCIAL, as macOS doesn't see "empty" space.)

3. Boot to the Firmware Setup (AKA, BIOS Setup), use one of these methods:

   • Open Start > Settings > Updates and Security > Recovery > Advanced Startup > Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings
   • Shutdown the laptop, press the power button once, press F1 (or keep holding it), you'll get into the UEFI Setup screen
   • Shutdown the laptop, press the power button once, press F12 (or keep holding it), you'll get into the boot menu, press Tab and select Enter Setup
   • Shutdown the laptop, press the power button once, press Enter (or keep holding it), press F1 to access the BIOS Setup.
   • If you're using GRUB2/Systemd-boot, select Boot Firmware Setup

4. Configure your BIOS setting:

   1. Config

      1. Network

         • Disable all the stacks and Wake On LAN
           • Will fix issues with Intel Ethernet in the OS
           • If you don't disable Wake On LAN you may have sleep issues later on macOS. Fixable but less desirable solution.

      2. USB

         • Charge in battery mode
           • Can be ON optionally

      3. Display

         1. Boot Display Device
            • ThinkPad LCD
         2. Total Graphics Memory
            • 512MB
              • Not sure if that's needed, but it's fine as it is
         3. Graphics Device
            • Hybrid Graphics

      4. RAID

         1. Disabled.

            • If you set it up before, or had Windows installed on 1 drive with RAID enabled, you'll have to fix that

              1. Backup your files
              2. Disable RAID
              3. Boot Windows
              4. It will crash, boot into safe mode
              5. Reboot to windows normally
              6. You should be good now

            • If you set it up before, or had drives (2 or more) in RAID mode, macOS will not be able to see them (hardware raid is not supported)

            • Either add a 4th drive for macOS or disable raid altogether.

   2. Security

      1. Security Chip
         1. Security Chip Selection: Intel PPT
            • The TPM chip existence creates sleep issues on macOS.
            • Use this and keep the presence if you're using security chips on Windows
            • Enabling this will disable Intel TXT
      2. Memory Protection
         • Enabled (default)
      3. Virtualization
         1. Virtualization Technology
            • Enabled (optionally, if you're going to use VMs or other apps using virtualization)
         2. VT-d
            • Enabled (by default disabled, optionally, if you're going to use some encryption software -like bitlocker- or do some hardware passthrough on other OSes)
      4. I/O Port Access
         • Disable hardware you're not going to use. (In my case, SDCard slot, TB3 and ExpressCard and WWAN)
      5. Anti-Theft
         1. Computrace
            1. Disabled (by default)
               • WARNING: if you choose Permanently Disabled, you will not be able to enable it again
      6. Secure Boot
         • Secure Boot: Disabled
      7. Intel SGX
         • Enabled (default)
      8. Device Guard
         • Disabled (default)

   3. Startup

      1. UEFI/Legacy Boot
         1. UEFI Only
         2. CSM Support
            • NO
            • You can enable it but there is really no need to, it also slows down the boot process by a lot
      2. Boot Mode: Quick

   4. Restart

      1. Exit Saving Changes

5. Reboot and make sure you can boot into Windows or Linux.

Ok, so I know that some of you may have a macOS machine nearby and some may not so I got the guide for both. The setup overview will be something like this:

1. Prepare a vanilla bare macOS installer
2. Install macOS and get it booting
3. Add extra stuff from this guide

• Please follow the guide properly, and read it fully before doing anything and prepare the needed hardware (you can skip WiFi card replacement).

• Make sure your laptop is charged

• Use USB2.0 drives

• Make sure you have a spare USB keyboard/mouse just in case and a USB type A hub (optional)

• Changes that are needed to do from the guide: (the rest should be the same as the guide prescribes)

  • You can use ProperTree on windows/linux to make OC's config.plist

  • Gathering Files (from the OpenCore main Guide):

    • Kexts
      • You do not need to use SMCSuperIO/LightSensor/BatteryManager for now
      • You must use VoodooPS2 (acidathera) with VoodooRMI from 1Revenger1 (check Laptop Specific section)
      • IntelMausiEthernet from acidandanthera or Mieze
      • Use USBMap.kext from this repo (no USBInjectAll)
      • You do not need to get all the kexts now, here is the list of the ones you really need for the installer:
        • VirtualSMC
        • Lilu
        • WhateverGreen
        • IntelMausi
        • VoodooPS2Controller (rehabman)
        • USBMap
        • VoodooPS2 (contains other kexts)
        • VoodooRMI (contains other kexts)
      • Note: When adding VoodooPS2 and VoodooRMI, you'll get a notification by ProperTree that there is a duplicate VoodooInput, choose yes to disable one of them (having both injected will cause a kernel panic).
    • SSDTs
      • Take from this guide (this one, not the linked)
        • SSDT-XCPM
          • Will enable native CPU power management
        • SSDT-USBX
          • From this repo, we do not need to fake EC as we already have it properly named.
    • Tools:
      • Use OpenCore's OpenShell.

  • OpenCore Template:

    • Note: you do not need to add the files manually in the config (the guide explains why). Just put the files where they should be and you can simply run OC Snapshot (or Clean Snapshot) to populate your config with proper paths for those files. This is covered in the guide in case you didn't follow through.

    • Skylake Laptop OpenCore Guide

      • ACPI
        • Get SSDT-PNLF (for brightness)
        • DO NOT use SSDT-GPIO (we do not have I2C devices)
        • DO NOT use SSDT-EC-USBX, use SSDT-USBX from the repo, we have EC properly named
        • You may skip SSDT-PLUG, use SSDT-XCPM (same difference, but with some extra stuff for power management). You can still use SSDT-PLUG and then use CPUFriendFriend and make your own Power Management Profile.
      • Booter
        • Quirks -- in addition to the default setup
          • DiscardHibernationMap = True (may fix hibernation for some)
          • ProvideCustomSlide = False (There is no need to have it enabled, if you have boot issues, enable it)
      • DeviceProperties

        • PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0)

          • For 1080p Models

            • For Xeon models: Intel HD P530

              • device-id = 16190000
              • AAPL,ig-platform-id = 00001619
                • You can try 26190000 and 00002619 combination too

            • For i7 models: Intel HD 530

              • No need for device-id
              • Optional: AAPL,ig-platform-id = 00001B19

            • For BOTH: (our DVMT-prealloc is small, can't change it either)

              Key	Type	Value
              framebuffer-patch-enable	Number	1
              framebuffer-stolenmem	Data	00003001
              framebuffer-fbmem	Data	00009000

          • For 4K UHD Models (thanks to u/TopuzWats's post)

            • For Xeon models: Intel HD P530 (not tested, need feedback, open an issue)

              • device-id = 16190000
              • AAPL,ig-platform-id = 00001619
                • You can try 26190000 and 00002619 combination too

            • For i7 models: Intel HD 530

              • No need for device-id
              • Optional: AAPL,ig-platform-id = 00001B19

            • For BOTH: (your DVMT is large enough)

              Key	Type	Value
              framebuffer-patch-enable	Number	1
              enable-max-pixel-clock-override	Number	1
              enable-hdmi20	Number	1

              • Note: enable-hdmi20 does not work on BigSur due to the broken Userspace patching, using enable-max-pixel-clock-override fixes 4K issues on BigSur (according to the reddit post)

        • PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1f,0x3)

          • layout-id = 29 (Number)

  • Kernel

    • Quirks (in addition to the guide's selection)

      • XhciPortLimit = NO
        • There is no need for this
      • AppleCpuPmCfgLock = NO
        • There is no need for this

    • Kexts, check the above gathered kexts

  • NVRAM

    • 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14 (Booter Path)
      • For those with 4K UHD display:
        • UIScale = 02
    • 7C436110-AB2A-4BBB-A880-FE41995C9F82
      • boot-args
        • -v debug=0x100 keepsyms=1
          • Use this for this install section, you can remove -v debug=0x100 once we're done.
      • Remove/Keep empty:
        • nvda_drv
        • prev-lang:kbd
          • You might change it to String with en-US:0 value, check the guide for other languages
      • csr-active-config
        • Keep it as 00000000 for full SIP (RECOMMENDED)
        • Keep it as 01000000 for unsigned kext allowing (partial SIP disabling, ONLY FOR TESTING KEXTS LOCALLY)
        • Keep it as 03000000 to allow unsigned kexts and system files modification (ONLY FOR DEBUGGING PURPOSES, NOT RECOMMENDED)

  • PlatformInfo

    • Use MacBookPro13,3

  • UEFI

    • Protocols
      • AppleSmcIo
        • Enable this if you're using FileVault2

• When done, make sure you check everything again before starting.

1. You can boot your OpenCore drive by starting your laptop to the Boot Menu
   • By pressing Enter until you get the Boot Interrupt Menu, press F12
   • By pressing F12
2. Boot your OpenCore USB
3. When you get to the OpenCore Boot Picker, quickly press the number for macOS recovery/installer (you have 5 seconds)
4. After macOS Installer starts up, select Disk Utility
   1. Select View > All Devices
      • 
   2. Select the partition you made earlier
   3. Select Erase
   4. Select APFS as format and name the drive whatever you want
      • 
   5. Select Erase
      • ⚠️ Disk Utility can suddenly crash and go back to the main menu, just wait like a minute or two, open Disk Utility again and see if the drive has been formatted
   6. Close Disk Utility once done and select Install macOS and install macOS obviously.
   7. The installer may reboot several times (at least once) and will automatically choose the drive to boot from, do not select/change the boot order. Make sure you start your USB drive on each reboot, you can do that automatically by moving the USB boot entry in Boot Options in your BIOS Setup to the top of the list order.
   8. Once macOS installed and get to the desktop (make sure you skip Apple Account login) you can now:
      1. Download MountEFI and install the Automator Quick Action
      2. While in Finder, click on Finder > Preferences > General > Show these items on the desktop > Hard disks and External disks
      3. You will see your SSD's partitions on the desktop, right click on the macOS partition > Quick Actions > Mount EFI > type in your password when you get the prompt. Your SSD's EFI will show up.
      4. Copy Your USB's FAT32 partition > EFI > BOOT and OC to Your SSD's EFI > EFI > .
      5. In your USB, backup EFI > BOOT > BOOTx64.EFI and replace it with OpenShell.efi that you will rename to BOOTX64.EFI, this way, your laptop will boot to the shell instead of OC
      6. Boot the USB from your firmware Boot Options
      7. Once you're greeted with the shell
         1. Type map -b, usually you'll find the first partition listed is the FAT32 readable partition, should be named FSX: where X is a number
            • In case you have multiple drives with FAT32 partitions your EFI might be something different from FS0, always check the files inside the partition you chose by running ls.
         2. Type FSX:
         3. Type bcfg boot add 00 FSX:\EFI\OC\OpenCore.EFI "OpenCore"
            • bcfg: Manages the boot and driver options that are stored in NVRAM. -- UEFI Spec sheet
            • boot: what bcfg needs to change
            • add: add entry
            • 00: entry order in the list (00 being the very first entry)
            • FSX:\EFI...: path to the EFI file
            • "OpenCore": name of the entry, you can choose whatever you want as long as it's 3 characters long and with the quotes.
         4. You can run the same commands for OpenShell.efi (with path \EFI\OC\Tools\OpenShell.efi) to make it accessible from the UEFI Boot Menu in case you need to fix/check things. (Optional, comes with security risks)
         5. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del and your laptop will reboot
      8. After that a new entry for the BOOTxOC is made and your laptop will boot to OC automatically.
         • Note that in the event of a Windows Update "replaces your EFI" (which it totally does NOT), you can simply check the boot order in the BIOS Setup > Boot and change the order as you see fit, or if suddenly the entry vanishes, you'll have to redo the steps above
         • I have yet to get this kind of issue
         • OpenCore's NVRAM clearing will reset the EFI boot entries to the defaults, rerun the above after an NVRAM clearing

After installing macOS, getting OpenCore to boot, it's time to get the rest of it to work. In this repository you'll find a bunch of SSDTs with a plist for patches that comes with SSDTs (if needed). Note that these ACPI files are made with my machine in mind (the RAM, SSD and HDD differences do not matter), and depending on your motherboard revision and your UEFI Firmware version/variation/revision/options, you may need to change things, but usually you wouldn't need to but just in case, I'll link many resources to get information to fix things on your end.

¹ : Only use this if you have a touchscreen and you want to use it with macOS. Not really the best way to interact with macOS as the driver will turn the touchscreen into a giant trackpad which is uncomfortable if you're going to invoke Launchpad or the like. Not really needed. Contains VoodooInput which will conflict with VoodooPS2 and VoodooRMI, keep VoodooInput from VoodooRMI.

² : Adding VoodooRMI will cause ProperTree to show you an error message about Duplicate Kexts (VoodooInput in this case), you need to disable one of them, selecting "Yes" in the ProperTree prompt will do that for you.

² : This kexts contains plugin kexts like RMISMBUS and RMII2C, disable the I2C one.

You should be all done for now. All of these patches will be in oc-additions.plist. You will have to merge them in your config.plist that you made earlier with the OpenCore guide.

³ : DO NOT install both, use only one of them.

Also without me telling you, you will not need to add the broadcom kexts if you're using intel.

No (not now)

You will need to disassemble your laptop:

1. Remove the battery and power
2. Remove the back cover
   • The screws stay retained in the cover
3. You will find 3 screw holes for the keyboard, THEY ARE LONG and they are labeled with a keyboard icon.
4. Open back the laptop screen and slide the keyboard towards the screen (DO NOT LIFT, just push it)
5. The keyboard will loosen up on bottom, you can lift it GENTLY from the bottom (aka the tracepoint buttons area)
6. Disconnect the TrackPoint and Keyboard ribbons (BE CAREFUL! THEY VERY FRAGILE)
7. You have now access to the extra 2 RAM slots and WWAN and WLAN slots.

As of now there are a lot of WiFi cards that are compatible:

By default, if you get proper screen resolution after macOS install, the screen res would be at a 200% DPI, which is for our devices 1920 by 1080, looks small on paper but its actual resolution is twice that at 3840 by 2160 which, you guessed it, your native screen resolution. It makes text sharper, elements of the screen bigger and more comfortable to use, however unlike windows, macOS does not have non-integer scaling, so you will not have a % you can choose from, but you'll have to give macOS a resolution to emulate and then "x2"s it as a Retina resolution. (The example bellow is taken from my tablet's guide, which has a 3:2 aspect ratio and a screen resolution of 2736x1824, the logic is the same).

• So for example, you want to get the "150%" scale on macOS
• Your "resolution" for that scale is 1536x1024 (from X2 guide)
  • If you give this resolution to macOS, the whole display will be blurry and mushy because the display will upscale it
  • To get better results visually, you will need to tell macOS that you have double that resolution and then it will "retinize" that resolution
  • So you must give macOS a resolution of 1536*2 by 1024*2 which is 3072 by 2048.
• To do that, you'll either have to follow this guide or by simply using this RDM Utility
  • This utility has the possibility of reading all possible resolutions of your system, and the ones that are marked with a ⚡️ are HiDPI resolutions.
  • You can even add resolutions (make sure they're twice the "seen" resolution and check "HiDPI")
  • This needs SIP disabled
    • ⚠️ Disabling SIP may create security issues on your system as the part of the OS that is critical is now vulnerable to modifications
    • You can completely disable it by rebooting to the recovery and running csrutil disable
    • You can completely disable it by editing config.plist\NVRAM\7C436110-AB2A-4BBB-A880-FE41995C9F8\csr-active-confg = E7030000 (in ProperTree or Xcode, if you're doing it with a text editor type 5wMAAA==) -- not recommended by OC.
      • Reboot to macOS

Some may start using macOS a lot on this device because it's that good, which may require you to hibernate your device from time to time. By enabled DiscardHibernationMap in Booter > Quirks, you'll be able to successfully enter and exit hibernation (as far as my testing goes). You will also need to set some arguments for HibernationFixup to get it working smoothly following their boot arguments here. For my preferences, I chose the following:

• EnableAutoHibernation 1
• WhenLidIsClosed 2
• WhenExternalPowerIsDisconnected 4(so that it will stay in sleep S3 when it's plugged in)
• WhenBatteryAtCriticalLevel 32

Which gives me a sum of 39 and I use it with hbfx-ahbm= boot argument.

• OpenCore Configuration
• Dortania
• Rehabman's:
  • ACPI patching guide
  • ACPI hot patching guide
  • Laptop Guide (it's old now, I recommend fewtarius' guide)
  • USB Power Property
  • Battery patching (to be used with SMCBattery)
  • Power Management
• Fewtarius' Clover Laptop guide
• Acidanthera's
  • WhateverGreen documentation
  • AppleALC wiki
• Osy's
  • HDA Fix
  • Thunderbolt shenanigans (good bed time stories)
• VoodooI2C's documentation

And with that, Good Luck and let me know if you succeeded. Also I would love to get fixes and changes to this guide to improve on it. Open an Issue or make a PR and I'll review it.

• Apple for macOS
• Acidanthera for OpenCore and all the kexts/utilities that they made
• Alex James (aka theracermaster) for NoTouchID and information
• Alexandre Daoud for VoodooI2C and more
• CorpNewt for many tools and utilities used through this guide (ProperTree, GenSMBIOS, USBMap and many more) and help to get this going in the first versions of OC
• DhinakG for various help
• fewtarius for Clover Laptop Guide and help
• Resset for help with ACPI trash
• u/TopuzWats's post
• Mykola Grymalyuk aka khronokernel (boomer-chan) for the OC guide and help (and being trash)
• 1Revenger1 for the guide and help and VoodooRMI and more
• osy86 for TB3 debugging and tons of informative writing about thunderbolt
• Rehabman for the patches and guides and kexts
• ReddestDream for tons of information
• r/hackintosh Discord for being a shithole for various helping hands and great community
• InsanelyMac Forums for whatever they have there, I haven't posted in that place in years
• Tonymacx86 forums for being assholes and banning me because I asked for volunteers to help me fix TB3, but fuck them anyway! DONT USE THEIR CRAP TOOLS!

Thank you.