Intel NUC8 CATALINA HACKINTOSH | Complete Install Guide 2020 

I made my Hackintosh using your tutorial yesterday. Had some problems, but in the end everything (nearly at least) works fine. If the installation crashes with Catalina 15.5, just reboot, everything will finish and work after that. I had big problems running clover - turns out that the BIOS Settings the brand new NUC shipped are not the default settings you get when you reset the BIOS. This actually costed me a few hours. The only thing I have to fix now is, that the system won't show anything on the screen, if 2 LCDs are connected. I can however connect the second screen after the system booted without any problems.

Been running a Hackintosh on my laptop for about a month but it’s been laggy and gives me occasional hiccups now and then. I redid some of the options in clover that you did and now it’s running better than ever! Thank you! You got my like and subscribe!

I used this guide with a NUC8i3 and it worked perfectly! Great bro

Thanks so much TechNolli! I got it working using your files on my Nuc8i5BEH and the exact same version of clover you used. A few things about my installation for other people to note which differ from the video. • Firstly, when you buy Technolli's EFI files, he's done all the work for you so all you need to do is copy those EFI files onto the USB. • Next use a front USB port for the installation! The back USB port crashed during the verbose install bit. • Where Technolli's system restarted itself after the Mac install and his screen flashed green I got an error instead saying "macOS could not be install on your computer - the bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk (-69793) Quit the installer and try again" just restart it and carry on. • After the OS install I got the error "You can't change the startup disk to the selected disk - the bless tool was unable to set the current disk" just click OK and then go to restart form the apple menu. • After that it's all plain sailing - I'm still testing it and I had a freeze up after trying sleep but thrilled. MY Geekbench 5 scores weren't as good as your but only a hundred or two on the multi core. Tehcnolli - you're a legend! Now I've got the guts to go big with an i9 or threaddripper system using your AMAZING guides!

First of all, thank you for making such instructive videos. I think it would bring a lot of valuable content to your channel (and I would love to) if you made a comparative performance video between an installation with clover and another with opencore (on the same computer) In addition, it would also be great if you explained basic differences between one form and the other. Thank you very much for your work and greetings from Spain (and sorry for my poor level of English 😅).

with your help, it is as easy as 1-2-3. thanks man!

For your notice: I think you can run 60 track while You are not hitting TDP and Thermal limit. You can change fan and power settings for a tiny little performance boost. And change thermal paste also helps. Same NUC Same everything but I got 32GB ram, just get my hack few hrs ago. Great job BTW.

Once again another fantastic video. Your channel is becoming addictive. I have finally come right with the sound issue on Lenovo y530 laptop Everything works. Except the obvious Wi-Fi card If anyone wants the EFI folder let me no or maybe you can post it on your website?

Thank you for this. I'm new to your videos but I love them! Don't be tempted to change them, leave them exactly as they are. Anyway, just wondering if Thunderbolt 3 is working on your NUC i5 hack? It would be great if you could add an eGPU!

I've been waiting for this from day one, well done TechNolli

Great video! These guides are really helpful for even seasoned hackintosh builders; I've built several over the years and still consider myself a beginner. Have you though trying this on a Gigabyte BRIX (since the wifi card is replaceable on those) or the ASRock Deskmini A300 (Ryzen) / 310 (Intel)? EXCELLENT CHANNEL, THANKS for sharing your files & keep up the great work.

Hi, FYI, I found that kext ( github.com/OpenIntelWireless/itlwm/releases/download/v1.1.0/AirportItlwm_v1.0_Beta_Catalina.kext.zip ) to make our Intel WiFi work. You can load it manually (unzip + "sudo chown -R wheel:root AirportItlwm.kext" + "sudo kextload AirportItlwm.kext") or If your MacOS SIP(System Integrity Protection) is disable, you can put it in /Library/Extensions/ and Voila :) It is not support yet by Clover yet, so don't put it in /EFI/CLOVER/kexts, it won't work.

A useful tip to enable Bluetooth (for sound as well) without having to use any extra dongles or firmware (works on Catalina 10.15.6). First, make sure you're using the EFI files (NUC8OC6.0EFI.zip) found here: www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-intel-nuc7-nuc8-using-clover-uefi-nuc7i7bxx-nuc8i7bxx-etc.261711/post-1968320. Create an Ubuntu bootable USB stick and start the NUC from that, booting to the desktop via the try Ubuntu option. Then simply pair a bluetooth device (such as your phone) with the NUC within Ubuntu as this seems to activate the bluetooth chip. If you now boot back into macOS, bluetooth will work and you can pair some bluetooth speakers to enable sound!

That's my dream working computer...

Great tutorial thanks! What about the NUC 8i5 you used for this tuto, i eared it was very noisy (with windows 10). The fan seems to be loud... What do you think? Thanks in advance!

Does this have side car ? Or do you do any relatively cheap builds that have side car working ?

Thanks for this, i got my first hackintosh working :) It is a 7i7BNH, just one quick question as this is my first Hackintosh, what can i upgrade to via the app store or system preferences? I see that 15.4 has been released, but i don't want to break my system. Thanks for a great video.

Thanks for the video! Aside from wifi and bluetooth, what else doesnt work?

I wonder how much of this effort could be leveraged for a BXNUC10i7FNH ? If I'm going to spend the money on a NUC, I might as well get the latest and greatest... Thanks!

Hola muy bueno tu tutorial .solo una cosa no consigo que funcione el audio no sé cómo arreglar lo me puedes decir cómo lo as hecho gracias

Hello Technolli, I have a problem with Clover. I'm on Hackintosh Catalina on a laptop (opencore). I cannot install Clover on the EFI partition of my USB key because it tells me that the partition is forbidden in writing. The partition is visible and mounted. I can write something on it. Do you know where it could come from? I found information about the csrutil config to modify in config.plist file but nothing helps. Thank you in advance. Very good continuation.

HI @TechNolli, if i need to use external Wifi adapter, what kext file should i use, i just bought the same NUC8, after watching your Video ;) , 32gb ram, 1tb nvme m.2 ssd

I have issue with the installer, it fail installing mac os to the hard driver.

how is your font? is it fuzzy? kind of pixelated? mine does......any idea? thank you...

I'm getting "Disk27s1 is not convertible to APFS: You may not install to this volume because it can not be converted to Apple File System (APFS)" I'm trying to install to a clean Samsung 860 Evo SSD that I formatted to APFS and GUID with the disk utility.

sorry but this tutorial doesn't work for Intel Nuc10i7FNH, I try everything they have posted and when boot from the usb it gives me an error and does not continue, I do not know what I am doing wrong.

Will this configuration work with IntelNUC7 i3 with 4Gb memory?

Thanks so much for the video super easy, one issue I have is that Bluetooth does not work, is their a fix for this? unsure if its working in your video? Thanks for the help

i got errors on a particular thing which says "applications/Install mac os Catalina.app is not a valid installer"can you help me resolve it. thanks

Thank you for this excellent guide! Got it working on my NUC8i7BEH. I tried generating the USB stick at first on my Mac Mini running macOS 10.15.4 but then then installer didn't work. I then downgraded to macOS 10.15.3, generated the USB stick and it installed flawless. Managed to get audio working through the frontend output by setting Devices > Audio > Inject 28. Any suggestion to get macOS on the NUC updated to 10.15.4? Because macOS now reports that it can be updated ...

not work on catalina 10.15.6,, error on first booting,,, any solutions please? big thx!!!

HELP! I keep getting stuck at boot manager part of the video (9:07) Clover boot manager gives me an error message when I try to install.... "o_Ops: '/Volumes/EFI' appear to be not writable, remounting read/write. sleeping 6 seconds.. Error: target volume "/Volumes/EFI" is not writable (may be running from a Virtual Machine??). (1) how can I correct this? any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks

Nice

Hi, I was curious if this whole process has to be done on this _exact_ model of nuc? Can it be done with others / with other hardware?

Hey TechNolli, Can this method be done with Mojave? on NUC8i5Bek

thanks for sharing. I love your voice.... smooth and cute from Thailand

I’ve got a NUC8i3, will this tutorial still work for me?

Site - technolli.com is broken?(ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT) I can't enter, bthw, tutorial is awesome!!) Headphones sound is working great?

how well would this work on a nuc7i5dnhe ? already have Mojave installed on that.

Does the onbaord wifi & BT work in Catalina?

Hello, I am stuck at installation, 2 minutes left. Any ideeas?

Help!!! Just watching the video now and I'm getting problems trying to install Clover from Technolli's website - which is Clover_r5117. I searched and searched and got past it a bit by booting to recovery mode and turning off csr with csrutil disable command from the terminal -> then reboot as normal. Nothing is getting me through, any help guys??? Please !

My MacBook already has Catalina installed, but the installer is not in the Applications folder. How can I download it, to copy it to the USB drive?

I'm installing on an Intel NUC8i7BEH. I am getting "an error occurred while preparing the installation. try running this application again" about 5 minutes into the install onto the NVMe harddrive. I have set the date (using terminal) to today's date. Any other ideas?

TechNolli, Could you make another tutorial base on Windows? Sorry I don't have Mac to build bootloader.

Worked fine for my NUC8i3BEH with a few issues. Thought I'd share with people so they can save time. iMessage - the SMBIOS generator codes didn't really work for me. I used the generator embedded in the Clover tool and it worked. Google "idiot's guide to imessage" (tonymac website). Sleep didn't work - fixed it by creating a USBports.kext to replace the existing USBinjectall.kext (google how to do this). Audio didn't work - changed the devices > audio > inject to layout 28. It works but it makes a crackling/static sound on boot and shutdown which is pretty annoying - will need to figure out a fix for this. Some youtube videos wouldn't load on Safari - it was like 50/50 - the videos that worked always worked and the ones that didn't, always didn't. Switched to chrome and it's been fine. Lastly, my bluetooth keyboard/mouse seem to have issues with the hackintosh and will sometimes stutter/delay/not type. I removed all connected bluetooth devices and may disable bluetooth already in Mac as I suspect that's the problem. Subject to the audio boot/shutdown fix and the bluetooth fix, this works great!

Hey TechNolli, my NUC8i7BEH is now running 10.15.4. Thanks for your great work! Is it possible to do the same on a NUC8 using Opencore?

I am stuck at the installation, I get a "An error occurred while preparing the installation." :(

what are the chances for this video to be updated ? or atleast a guide somewhere ? Most programs aren't compatible with latest Catalina anymore

This can be done much easier. If you make a zip of your EFI folder, people just have to copy the os on a usb and copy the EFI folder to it. Done. I'm running this nuc for a couple of months on Catalina, and it's running just fine). (edit) : btw..put a Nvme SSD in it..runs much faster ;-)

Thank you! I now have installed my first Hackintosh!

Amazing Video Technolli! I was also one of the guys who requested for the NUC 8 Hackintosh! How about Thunderbolt 3? Does the EFI folder you included have the Thunderbolt 3 driver or have the port activated? This will be awesome if we can use TB3 devices on Nuc 8 Hackintosh like audio interfaces and EGPUs! Thanks for this! Looking forward for Your next Nuc 8 video! Cheers!

Thanks for the efforts, but you don't seem to have any files on your website for this build. I am unable to read the video for the Boot Fix codes I am supposed to enter into Clover Configurator.

Great! I previously tried with opencore and failed. My orignal concept was replacing a qnap nas with a 2 TB MacMini. What kept me from doing: 3.2k€ in Germany for the mini. ;-) Now i use a NUC8i5BEK with windows pro but would be keen on using MAC OS. I currently own A NUC 8i5BEK, an AKASA Passive Cooling Case, a 2 TB ADATA SX820PRO, 32GB Kingston RAM and Sonnet Thunderbol 10Gbit. This hardware costs roundabout 1.1k €. Your VideoGuide will enbale me to save 2K€ and still have a silent mac based NAS machine. Thanks again for your great tutorials! pls keep on releasing such great videos!

Great as usual. I have an old NUC5i5 with Catalina on it for my wife (browsing, spreadsheets...) and it works like a charm ! Greetings from France :)

hello, just to say thank you for the tutorial. I didn't install Catalina but Mojave by following your video exactly. I preferred Mojave for reasons of software compatibility (I use virtual pianos etc) because I am a musician. Conclusion the tutorial is also valid for mojave. Thank you very much Eric

Thanks for this amazing content. I just subbed ! Does this tutorial works for NUC 7 ? Can I keep the same EFI folder ?

Will there be a Win version of this tutorial ? Thanks.. Much appreciated :-)

my screen goes black after the EFI boot. Sometimes the apple loading logo comes up for a few seconds, other times it flashes grey before going black :(

Can you do one with an i3?

Do you need to first have have a Mac, in order to do this?

Is it critical to clover being able to successfully boot on this device that you used SMBIOS macmini vs iMac settings?

I've been wanting to build a Hackintosh. After looking at all my options, this seems to best fit my needs, budget and skill level. Just ordered all the components from Amazon, can't wait to get started. I'll be back to go over the MacOS installation instructions. Thanks!

great work :) keep bringing these builds please! would this approach work on the Hades canyon NUC? Also, what works/doesnt work on this?

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I used it for my NUC8i3BEH. All is working flawlessly.

Thanks for this tutorial. I tried and the nucintosh works perfectly. I tried a couple of bluetooth dongles (OSX compatible, the system detects them as I plug them in) to connect a magic mouse but they don't detect anything. I think the system is trying to use the internal bluetooth instead of the usb dongle. Is there anything that I should do to enable them? Thanks again for the video.

Thanks for these hackintosh vids. Any chance of some amazon links in the description for this puppy and parts ?

I keep getting installation Failed. EFI appear to be not writable :(

Love your videos. Hoping the Ryzen vs Intel video is still coming.

If you dont mind, what is the full model of this NUC8? I only ask because there seems to be several models of the NUC8.

Hi mate, great instruction, however I have some problem, is a nuc8 with 8GB Crucial PC4-19200 Ram and a Kingston A2000 M2. Managed to install, copy the EFI from USB to m2 EFI, but instead of loading after the apple logo immediately appear the prohibitory symbol. If I reset the various time, in the end it loads, it loads ok with the same EFI from usb. I thought it was because of the m2 so I try installing on a evo 860 ssd, and the same, also on a regular hdd. Any ideas?

Are you using a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 pen drive.??

HI guys here is my account of following this guide. Last week I decided to follow this guide for a NUC8i7BEH running Mojave instead of Catalina. I couldn't get terminal to install Mojave for some reason so I used Unibeast and then the TechNolli NUC8 EFI on their website. I couldn't get past verbose mode. A couple of days later I created a Catalina bootloader using terminal and then used the TechNolli NUC8 EFI. I got to the stage of installing Catalina but it would always fail to install and come up with an error message with two mins to go. Since then I tried to install Catalina using every suitable EFI folder I could find on the internet for Bean Canyon but Catalina still would not install onto my NVME. Then on one of the Hackintosh groups I read someone had success by choosing a slightly lower but similar Mac model in SMBIOS. Today I created a Unibeast Mojave installer like I did in my first ever attempt and I used the TechNolli NUC8 EFI. In SMBIOS I selected 2012 i7 Mac Mini instead of 8.1 Mac Mini - this time it worked!!! Once I booted into Mojave from the NVME, I replaced the EFI on the NVME with a copy of the one from the bootloader USB and then opened plist in Clover configurator and changed the SMBIOS to 8.1 Mac Mini and its still working fine! Also I went to GUI and hid the recovery and other partitions so that on the Clover boot menu it only shows the Mojave partition on my NVME. I'll probably turn off verbose mode in the Boot Arguments once I am confident the system is stable. Thanks to TechNolli! - Your EFI folder is really good! BTW if you don't have an ethernet cable or a compatible WIFI dongle yet, you can connect your iPhone via lightning to USB cable (maybe wired connection to Android smartphone works too?) and use it as a wired hotspot in the short term for things like Geekbench. Oh my i7 has a geekbench 5 score of 1156 single core and 4901 multi core as Mac Mini 8.1

I'm stuck installing Clover on the EFI partition. I followed all the steps until minute 9:07, when I receive the error message" Error: target volume "/Volumes/EFI" is not writable. (1) " even though I previously try to select "make filesystem writable in Clover app before launching the installer... any clue? Thank you very much in advance *edit: I successfully managed the installation on the EFI partition using the Clover app form a NON Catalina Mac. Hope this info to be useful, as I read is a common issue. Thank you very much, again.

That was that i was waiting for. Really nice small Computer for a Really nice small desk. Addionally in it is able to dualboot with linux. Amazing. 👍

Did you try layout-id 28 (HAAAAA==) for the audio?

Can you share in github or other about config.plist? Iam very interested my nuc to install the hackintosh

TechNolli: I can only think of one place to go on RU-vid... Everyone else: What other channel is there??? Glad to see you back I was beginning to wonder where you were. Another great video...You don't miss anything and make doing this really easy! I've been wanting to see a video on one of these to see how they perform. Can the processor be changed out like on the Lenovo? I ended up putting a i7 4785T in mine and it's running quite a bit better. Thanks for anther awesome video!!! EDIT: From another video it seems Intel decided to solder the CPU and the WiFi card on the board, so looks like no CPU upgrade and a USB WiFi dongle if WiFi/Bluetooth is wanted on these things for Mac. I really wish these companies would just stop with the soldering of main components to the motherboards. I am back to looking at the HP Pro-desk 600 G4 or Elite-desk 800 G4 I guess. But I admit the way the NUC's come is nice though....Soooo Maybe LOL. Looks like the Skull and Hades models don't have the wifi/bt soldered and have two NvMe slots so that's a good one to get.

very good video. Could you also provide a Efi file for this NUC8 for open core intallation?

I have a NUC5i7BEH can i use this on it?

Thank You for this! I'm going upgrade my old mac mini 2009 with this tiny nuc i5... :D

I have been struggling getting a nuc7i5bnh kaby lake to work. To no avail no luck with Clover, opencore, all gave one problem or another.

This is a great video! Here is what I did on my NUC8i3BEK and a Windows System: Catalina 10.15 didn't work on the usb drive, I get errors about my disk not being able to boot and the resources for installation not found. 1. Made a Virtual Machine on Windows with Catalina OS (I have AMD so I used VMWARE and the video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xkKsgtfyxTk.html) 2. On the installation of this Catalina OS virtual machine you have to disable SIP (csrutil disable on Terminal before going to disk utility) 2. Download the installer of Mojave from dosdude1.com/mojave/ on the Catalina OS 3. You have to download Mojave on your Catalina OS desktop and later copy it to Applications and then the same as this video but of course with "sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/xxx" (where xxx is the name of your usb drive) Thanks a lot!!

Hey Technolli! Quick question for you. I have a an issue with my Catalina build that I never had before. Whenever my laptop sits idle for a while it crashes and reboots itself. It does not do it when it is in use though. Any idea why it is doing this? Thanks!

Error: target volume "/Volumes/EFI" is not writable. FIX: Click the Apple symbol in the Menu bar. Click Restart… Hold down Command-R to reboot into Recovery Mode. Click Utilities. Select Terminal. Type csrutil disable. Press Return or Enter on your keyboard. Click the Apple symbol in the Menu bar. Click Restart…

Thank you for all these tutorials which help us enormously. I greatly appreciate your explanations which are very useful to us on a daily basis.👍

I got error message saying "an error occured while preparing the installation when installing to the Installation drive. Try running this application again". Followed every step you did. where did i go wrong?

When im installing macOS Catalina i get an error "an error occurred while preparing the installation. try running this application again." right when it gets to 2 minutes remaining pls helppp

Tried 2 times, BIOS Update [BECFL357.86A] doesn't seem to boot...the only thing different here from your video is the Legacy boot...i don't have my usb drive under legacy usb....only UEFI....

Hello, I'm trying to set Catalina 10.15.4 on Intel Nuc10i5. I have the USB prepared and all the configuration on bios done, but when I push on "install" from Clover, I have an error and don't pass trough [EB|#LOG:EXITBS:START]. Any sugestion?

Hi great video. By the way I was successfully Install MacOS 10.15.5 on NUC8i7BEH by following tutorial in this video. But I have problem with sound and WiFi. Could you give references to make my NUC work with sound or WiFi? Thanks...

How should we go about updating to next macOS (after catalina)?

I used your EFI folder in my nuc with Mojave, works perfect.

What kind of nuc8 are you using? Unfortunately, the guide wasn't succesful on my nuc8i3. Can boot to installation, which is interrupted after 2-3 minutes before finishing. :(

Hey, if you have the resources, would you mind doing a similar video with an 8th gen Intel based Gigabyte BRIX? It is extremely similar platform but also allows changing out the wifi/BT card to an Apple compatible one. www.gigabyte.com/us/Mini-PcBarebone/GB-BRi5H-8250-rev-10 or maybe www.gigabyte.com/us/Mini-PcBarebone/GB-BRi7H-8550-rev-10

I have the same Intel nuc and wanna know if everything works with your configuration. Do wifi and Bluetooth works? Or need to be replaced with an external card? I have windows 10 installed on my m.2 driver and wanna dual boot MacOs on 2.5" disk, is it possible?

Please do a NUC 10 i7 Performance Kit. They are running $599 on Amazon. OpenCore 5.7 please. You are doing a lot of good work for this community. The full install videos really are instructive. I have learned a lot watching them.

didn’t I ask for this or something

Anybody can me help me to install Catalina on a Optiplex 7010 with i5 3570k ? Or just help me to find keks for this CPU / Motherboard ? thanks

I have Intel-NUC5I5RYH and the Apple Mac Installer is failing on me. Will kext and DSDT selection be different for NUC5?