T440p - Hackintosh Catalina (10.15.4) Guide

Overview

• This guide references a few other guides. Credit for those guides is given to their respective owners.
• It is assumed that you have a decent understanding of Hackintosh, the macOS environment, as well as how to do basic computer tasks.
• Will guide you through some of the different information needed to get macOS Catalina 10.15.4 working on your Thinkpad T440p. I have recently updated this guide for support for Catalina and as such, the new kexts are not backwards compatible with older versions of macOS. If you would like help installing an older version, please open an issue on this repo.
• Special thanks to midi1996 on GitHub for his guide on how to create the macOS installer from Recovery.
• Note: I am NOT responsible for any harm you cause to your device. This guide is provided "as-is" and all steps taken are done at your own risk.

Guide

Information

What works:

• Power management/sleep
• Brightness Control
• Battery Information
• Audio (from internal speaker and headphone jack)
• USB Ports
• Graphics Acceleration
• FaceTime/iMessage
• Trackpoint/Touchpad (see below)
• WiFi and Bluetooth, Handoff and AirDrop, other Apple features (with WiFi card and BIOS mod, see below)

What doesn't work:

• There is currently a bug in the latest versions of the AppleALC kext that cause reboots after waking from sleep. While waiting for a fix on this, I have temporarily rolled back the kext to version 1.2.8. This shouldn't appear any different to you, but at this time do not update this kext until a fix is released.

WiFi/Bluetooth Card and BIOS Mod:

If you wish to have native features such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Handoff, AirDrop, etc. working on your hackintosh, you will need to use a supported card. I have opted to use the DW1560 BCM94352Z card. I have had no issues with this card and all Apple features work without using issue using the files from this guide. You will also need to have a modded BIOS in order for your T440p to accept the card. I had my BIOS modded in this thread here. Follow all of the information in the beginning of that thread in order to receive help. If you have questions or need help getting yours working, feel free to open an issue so we can resolve it!

Creating the USB Installer

Since I don't have access to a legitimate Mac, I needed to be able to create a vanilla macOS installer. This guide (and many others) used to inform users to create a USB installer for a macOS Distro such as Niresh. While this may work just fine for then creating a vanilla macOS installer, distro's can be (and are) very shady. They come preloaded with a bunch of extra junk that is not needed, and just overall are highly advised against being used. Follow the steps below to figure out how to create a REAL macOS Catalina Vanilla installer without having access to a real Mac.

1. Follow the steps at this guide Here.
2. When you get to the part about installing clover bootloader, follow the steps below for configuring kexts, etc.
3. IMPORTANT (DO NOT MISS THIS): Now, copy Clover bootloader and the kexts files that you have downloaded to another USB drive (not the one you're burning the installer too) or an external hard drive. You will need access to them later.
4. Copy the CLOVER folder you have downloaded from this repository onto your USB drive as well.
5. Copy the CLOVER folder you have downloaded from this repository into EFI/. You can simply copy over the whole folder as the config.plist and everything else is already configured for the T440p.
6. The most important step that I missed twice in the guide above is to make sure you add the HFSPlus.efi driver into /EFI/Clover/drivers64UEFI. I missed this step twice and couldn't see any drivers at all inside of Clover.
7. For more help on configuring Clover and the USB installer, the original guide linked in step 1 will be of the most help to you. Make sure you install the kexts and CLOVER folder from this repo onto your Clover USB, as these will guarantee your T440p will work properly.
8. We are now ready to continue into the next topic: Installing macOS Catalina.

Installing macOS Catalina

1. After you followed the guide above and have your USB drive ready to go, we can reboot the machine. When you reboot, enter into the BIOS to change some settings. On the T440p, you can do this by hitting Enter at the Lenovo boot screen.
2. Once in the BIOS, make sure you change the following settings. Disable Security Chip, Disable Anti Theft Module, and Disable TPM. Basically, disable all of the "security" features. Make sure Secure boot and other features like that are off. These features will affect how macOS sleeps.
3. Now, reboot into macOS and select the USB drive inside of Clover.
4. Boot into macOS and install onto your hard drive. I recommend using an SSD.
5. After this is done, reboot the computer and let it sit. Mine rebooted a few times on its own to go through some final installation procedures.
6. Once you see the "region selection" screen, you are good to proceed.
7. Create your user account and everything else, but do not sign in with your iCloud account. If it asks you to connect to a network, select the option that says do not connect and press continue. We will connect it later.
8. After you've booted, plug in the USB drive or external hard drive that you copied the Clover file to in step 9 of the previous section.
9. Install Clover bootloader following the same steps as before and using the same settings, except this time install them onto your internal hard drive with your Catalina installation. I recommend checking the box that says Install Clover Configurator as well (it comes in handy later).
10. We now need to copy our Clover configuration from our USB to our hard drive with Catalina. Simply copy the CLOVER folder that you have on your other USB drive (the one you used in step 9 of the previous section) into the EFI partition that Clover should have mounted during install.

Post-Installation

FHD Screen

If you have done the full HD (1920x1080) screen mod (like myself), it is recommended that you install One Key HiDPI. This will mimic the "retina" display feature that many of Apple's newer laptops come with.

UltraBay HDD

If you are using a HDD or SSD in place of the normal optical drive, you will need to install AHCIPortInjector.kext and AppleAHCIPort.kext into Library/Extensions.

AHCIPortInjector.kext fixes the Disk not initialized issue (disk cannot be read). AppleAHCIPort.kext fixes the disk being detected as an external drive (instead of internal).

Setting up Apple services (Facetime, iMessage, etc.)

I highly recommend following This guide to get these features working. It worked for me on the first try and was super straight forward compared to other guides that I have seen before in the past.

Getting audio working

In order to get audio to work, there are a few simple steps we need to follow. This has been tested and working on High Sierra and Catalina. Special Thanks to this guide Here for help in getting this to work. By default, speaker audio should work, but audio via the headhpone jack does not. Follow the steps below to get it working.

1. First, copy the .zip file called alc_fix.zip inside the foldr Audio Stuff to the desktop.
2. Open terminal and type cd desktop/alc_fix, then hit enter.
3. Then, type ./install.sh and press enter.
4. The provided config.plist has already been configured to inject Audio Layout ID 28. This enables the headphone jack to work.
5. Restart and enjoy your audio from the headphone jack!

Customizing About This Mac

In order to customize the About This Mac section, I recommend you follow the guide Here.

For the section about changing the logo, you can use the T440p logo's I have designed in /SystemLogos/.

Fix Middle Button Scrolling with Non-Synaptics Trackpad

Since Apple only uses Synaptics trackpads in their Macbook's, a non-synaptics trackpad will have problems getting things like gestures to work, as well as the popular "middle button scrolling" used on Thinkpads (combination of pressing the middle button and using the Trackpoint to scroll). If you're like me, I ordered the Alps varient of the upgraded T450 trackpad, which the VoodooPS2Controller kext does not support gestures for. In order to "fake" the middle button scrolling, we need to download an app called Smart Scroll. Once this is done, go to the "vector scroll" section, and enable it. Then, if you clikc the middle button, you can now scroll down by using the trackpoint. This is unfortunetely only a temporary solution as it doesn't behave the same. Thanks to Redit user daftguy for finding this solution.