retropineaple/ForbiddenItlwm: AirDrop in both directions on an
Intel AX211 through macOS's own AWDL stack (fork of AirportItlwm, GPL-2.0, created 2026-11-10). By its README and
HOW-IT-WORKS the driver publishes awdl0 on the native IO80211 and Skywalk stack and leaves wifip2pd and the kernel
peer manager unchanged. It reports about 20 MB/s with normal Wi-Fi still connected, on 25G241 only. Three things in
it apply to any card:
- a listener context in the firmware on channel 149 next to the infrastructure link;
- a send gate that follows the iPhone's availability windows;
- the peer manager only accepts a peer when the frame metadata carries a real RSSI.
It also ships a Bluetooth LE advertising fix. For us this is the first public sign that the route through Apple's own AWDL engine works end to end on a third-party card on Tahoe, and it contradicts the view that the engine is out of a driver's reach. GPL: we take the design, never the code. One machine and one build, read from the docs, not reproduced. Confidence: Medium.
- f0xeri/qwz-macos v0.0.27 (Qualcomm): the release says native Wi-Fi and both IO80211 ABI checks pass on 26.7.3 (25G342), while the README still calls 26.7.2 and 26.7.3 pending. It matches what we saw: 25G342 has the same kernel as 25G332 and our menu kext runs on it unchanged. Confidence: Medium.
- kgp-macPro/AirportItlwm-Tahoe#8: the owner states that AirDrop is not supported there.
- thanhnndev/mt7925-macos: a separate native MT7925 driver, 25G241 only; it is the base cao5555's AirDrop work builds on (see mt7925-wifi).
- DrogaBox/RTL8814Native is private since 2026-11-01.
An Atheros AR9565 prototype that does not run yet, two EFI repos, documentation commits in the Intel forks.