Mini guide: Sonoma and Broadcom

[zearp]

I did some experimenting and while it isn't too difficult to get it working again I'm not sure if it's worth it. Unless you need Sonoma I would stay on Ventura for now unless you don't mind reducing the security. Better solutions for Broadcom users may pop up in the future as we're not the only ones facing this issue.

The attached EFI should only be used with Broadcom, the usb map has been adjusted and has additional kexts. It won't work properly with Intel wifi/bt.

To make Broadcom work there are a few steps involved:

• Download macOS Sonoma from the App Store
• Create a Sonoma usb installer, there's no need to add the EFI to it unless you do a clean install
• Download the latest release build of OCLP here. Copy the file to the installer if doing a clean install
• Replace your current EFI with the one attached to to this post, don't forget to copy/paste your serials/etc
• Reboot -> reset nvram -> boot into the Sonoma installer. Resetting nvram is a must!
• Install Sonoma on top of your existing macOS to upgrade, or format and start fresh
• Many reboots and a long time later when all is done you can unpack the OCLP archive and run OCLP
• All you have to do here is apply root patches, it should say it's going to install modern wifi drivers
• You can throw the OCLP files in the bin as it copied itself to /Applications for later usage

Broadcom should now work and some downsides have been mitigated such as amfi being disabled breaking certain apps (Adobe is famous for it). But SIP will have remain partly disabled and the filesystem has been modified by adding the old drivers. Not very vanilla but it works.

The biggest downside currently is that FileVault isn't working for me, it always errors out for me with the root patches applied. All iCloud integrations I've tested worked. Taking calls, forwarding 2FA codes/text messages, using iPad as external screen, universal remote also worked. Copy/paste between iDevices and hand off and such also seemed to work fine. Didn't test everything but it seems ok!

Just no full disk encryption, a showstopper for me personally and hopefully something that can be fixed in the future.

OTA updates should work since our SMBIOS is still supported by Sonoma but because we have broken the security delta updates will no longer work so you'll always have to download the full 12gb installer when there are Sonoma updates. There are ways to get delta updates to work but it involves a lot of editing and rebooting and not really worth it unless your internet connection is super slow. Root patches might need to re-applied after updates.

Please report successes and failures here. Maybe FileVault work for some of you or you find a different issue.

Updated in June 2024 for Sonoma 14.4+
EFI-Sonoma-Brcm.zip

[naryfa]

I will wait for now.

[naryfa]

Hey Zearp, it's been a few months...

Have you seen any progress with Broadcom? Still requires unsealing the OS?

Mind saying again what was it that didn't work after breaking the seal? Was it just the delta updates and disk encryption?

Were you able to resolve any of these problems?

[zearp]

There is no way around not breaking the file system seal. So there is no way to use Sonoma with Broadcom and have full disk encryption. So for me thats a no go and should be for anyone that values their data. There will not be a way to ever use FileVault in combination with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, it is simply not possible. Sorry.

[naryfa]

I see.