Intel Xe on macOS: what moved, 2026-10-19 to 2026-10-22

Target: XeGfx (Linux i915/xe on XNU through a FreeBSD LinuxKPI shim, first hardware Arrow Lake-HX 8086:7D67). Window: 2026-10-19 00:00 UTC to 2026-10-22. Confidence uses High / Medium / Low / Unverified.

VedCloud's Meteor Lake port now composites the desktop on the GPU (High, self-reported with logs). VedCloud/Meteor-Lake-Xe-LPG-Metal-Graphics, v1.0.14, README.

• Stack: the same as XeGfx. Linux i915 from drm-kmod, built from 438 sources against LinuxKPI on XNU, Mesa ANV with a darwin mmap patch, libdrm over an IOKit render node, AIR to SPIR-V. Hardware: MTL 8086:7D45 on macOS 15.8.1.
• Firmware: GuC submission runs on both GTs with Linux's unchanged mtl_guc_70.bin (70.53.0), plus DMC 2.23, HuC 8.5.4 and GSC 102.1.15.
• Fixes we should know (XeGfx #4, #5, #9):
  • a LinuxKPI lost wake-up (TASK_WAKING not kept under the sleep-channel lock) showed up as false GuC TLB-invalidation timeouts;
  • a context use-after-free in signal_irq_work, fixed with the upstream "drm/i915/gt: Fix ce use-after-free in signal_irq_work()";
  • kernel 1.0.15 starts i915's stolen-memory allocator after the firmware console image, which gave the first GPU-composited desktop.
• Display: i915 runs without display discovery. A small framebuffer kext keeps scanning out the firmware framebuffer, the same idea as NMIntelFB.
• Still open: smoothness. Seven CoreAnimation fence timeouts, a 172 ms publication stall, one 2.39 s GPU wait.
• Licence: their i915/DRM patches are GPL-2.0 and LinuxKPI patches BSD-2, so they can be compared directly. The NullMoth-derived parts are PolyForm Noncommercial. Their own kexts are Apache-2.0.

Linux's firmware-framebuffer takeover checks (High). lutzbichler/drm-kmod branch pr/7.3 imported about 150 i915/xe commits on 2026-10-20. The ones for #9:

• drop the BIOS framebuffer on a wrong depth/bpp (9eb4720580);
• disable the plane when the initial readout fails (2b20606b8b);
• keep new framebuffers out of stolen memory (b63eb2f992).

They're Linux 7.3 code and XeGfx builds on 6.12, so treat them as a checklist, not a backport. Nothing in the window touches MTL/ARL device IDs or GuC loading for i915.

Keep GEM backing pages wired (Medium). FreeBSD drm-kmod #527: an i915 GPU hang on drm-612-kmod 6.12.110, the base XeGfx builds on (Comet Lake 9BC4, FreeBSD 16). It happens when shmem backing pages are swapped out; with swap off it doesn't. Relevant to #4.

Check which IP 7D67 is (Medium). Some Arrow Lake parts use Xe-LPG+ (12.74), not Xe-LPG (Phoronix). Confirm 7D67's entry in i915's device tables before the first GuC request.

WhateverXe 0.3.0 and 0.4.0 (High). 0.4.0, 0.3.0.

• Coverage: one kext for Big Sur to Tahoe on Tiger Lake and Alder Lake-N. 0.4.0 adds experimental Tiger Lake laptop panels, USB-C DP-alt and brightness.
• Panel technique (Apple's driver patched in about 20 places):
  • reads panel facts from the firmware VBT, accepting a stale checksum when the structure is valid (a0e7069);
  • keeps the allocated pipe, since Tiger Lake has no eDP transcoder (db83e5f);
  • matches DP_TP_CTL enhanced framing and the eDP alternate scrambler reset to DPCD 0x10A; without that, the panel stayed dark after display sleep (9d7e4a6);
  • forces Y-tiling (bd86080).
• Scope: Xe-LPG and later (Meteor/Arrow Lake, our 7D67) are "Not Planned". Ideas only for us; the code is tied to Apple's binary driver.

WhateverXe-Graphics v0.1.0 and the OCLP fork (High).

• Installer: v0.1.0 installs re-signed Apple graphics payloads under /Library and rebuilds the AuxKC, with no System-volume patch. Builds pinned: 20G1443 through 25G241. It needs SIP 0x803 and the "Mod" AMFIPass 1.4.1. On Tahoe it turns off CoreMedia's AllowOnePassMetalScaling.
• OCLP fork: 3.0.0-rc.3+m.3 removed its Intel Xe root patch (586fdd4).
• For us: an idea for shipping userspace pieces later (#6, #7).

XPS 13 Plus on Tahoe (High). JulioNectar/Hackintosh-XPS13Plus-IrisXe-Tahoe, STATUS, KERNEL-PATCHES.

• Setup: Raptor Lake-P Iris Xe (A7A0) spoofed as Tiger Lake 9A49, running Apple's TGL drivers through a NootedGreen fork. GuC is off. Tahoe 25G241, the same build as ours.
• New in the window:
  • libxedrv v16/v17, a userspace adapter for Tahoe's private Metal structures: blits moved off the unordered 2D engine, Stencil8 targets at 64 KB alignment (e040a26);
  • csbresync, a kernel patch for a context-status event Apple's scheduler dropped, which tripped the watchdog (41a831d);
  • XE-BOOTHOLD, which keeps plane A and the backlight dark until WindowServer owns the display (ae67bc6);
  • internal speakers through a SOF/SoundWire shim.
• Licence: Thou Shalt Not Profit 1.0, derived from NootedGreen. Ideas only.
• For the Legion, not XeGfx: their E-core hang came from OpenCore ProvideCurrentCpuInfo assuming 128 logical CPUs per package (fixed with Cpuid1Data EBX[23:16]=0x80). Arrow Lake-HX is also hybrid; worth checking.

NootedGreen reporters (Medium; threads only, its licence forbids AI use of the code).

• #21: on real Tiger Lake, IntelAccelerator::start() returns 0xB0C6A101 with no child services, so no modeset runs and the panel never lights.
• #22: on Raptor Lake the donor accelerator hard-freezes, and the framebuffer divides by zero in hwWaitForVBlank.
• The Apple donor route keeps stalling at display bring-up, which supports keeping the firmware's mode in #9.

The web sweep (r/hackintosh, InsanelyMac, Dortania, PCBeta through search) found no new project or success report for Xe on Sequoia/Tahoe since 2026-10-15. Search engines index those forums poorly, so this means "nothing indexed", not "nothing happened". steelbrain/metal2vulkan's ~120 commits were MoltenVK tuning with nothing Intel-specific. Its #9 (ANGLE's metallib rejected by the AIR front end) is background for a future Metal-on-ANV path.

• XeGfx credits: e4f73c5
• NvGfx xe docs/XE.md and the gpu/xegfx subtree: 69a28c0
• Comments: XeGfx #9, #4, #5

VedCloud relabels the desktop "smooth" (Medium that the claim is unsupported). Commit 62b26be82 changes the README's desktop status from "usable, choppy" to "Working, smooth". It drops the row with 7 fence timeouts and a 2.39 s wait, and adds a table of Dell peripherals that are mostly pending (AWDL, tablet mode, subpixel text).

Their newest desktop capture is still windowserver-result-20261020-190817.md. It records four CoreAnimation fence timeouts and a 339 ms submission wait, with no frame-rate measurement, so nothing dated backs "smooth" yet.

The only code change is setPowerState in their NullMoth-derived kext: it now keeps the previous power state when the backend call fails and publishes the last error in the registry. That's PolyForm NC code, so idea only.

Our XeGfx and NvGfx xe credit lines stay accurate. They say "a GPU-composited desktop", not "smooth".