Installing macOS Mojave with an NVIDIA Graphics Card

5 Oct 2018

Warning: Do not try this at home.

macOS Mojave has been around for a couple of months now, and while it hasn’t been a monumental release, it does offer some a long-sought cosmetic feature, a true dark mode. Sadly, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, though. Apple have once again flip-flopped graphics providers, moving back to AMD, leaving NVIDIA users like myself out in the cold, dependent on NVIDIA’s lagging driver release schedule. Thus the question becomes: How far am I willing to go in the name of sweet, sweet dark mode?

Apparently about to the end of this post.

Update to macOS High Sierra

It is not advised by Apple to upgrade a Mac Pro to Mojave directly from macOS versions prior to 10.13.6 (High Sierra). If you’re already on 10.13.6, skip this section.

1. Download macOS High Sierra from the App Store.

2. The installer includes a firmware update, and requires that you have a Mac-EFI-flashed graphics card installed (e.g. the OEM graphics card).

3. Once you’ve verified that you have a proper graphics card installed, follow the instructions in the installer.

Upgrade to macOS Mojave

1. Turn off FileVault, as it is not supported in Mojave on Mac Pro 5,1.

2. Download macOS Mojave from the App Store.

3. While the installer downloads, check for unsupported hardware. Mojave requires Metal-capable graphics cards. To verify that your graphics card is supported, look in the Graphics/Displays section of System Information.

System Information showing our Metal-capable NVIDIA graphics card.

4. Like 10.13.6, macOS Mojave includes a firmware update. The update requires that all installed cards support Metal, so remove any unsupported cards before proceeding (This update does not require a Mac EFI-flashed graphics card be installed).

5. If the installation fails like mine did, you may reinstall a Mac-EFI-flashed graphics card, even if it does not support Metal, and continue. The graphics won’t be pretty, but sufficient to complete the upgrade.

Install Web Drivers

1. Download the Webdriver Manager app.

2. Launch the Webdriver Manager and select Reinstall Webdriver, then Download Webdriver.

3. Once it’s completed downloading, relaunch the app and select Existing Webdriver Patching. The app requires access to Terminal, so be sure to grant it when prompted.

4. After the patch has been applied, open Terminal and execute the following commands:

Upon restart, NVIDIA graphics should be "working", in the most liberal sense of the word. Without hardware acceleration, Safari is a mess, and Launchpad slows to a crawl. Being a member of teams Ungoogled Chromium and Spotlight, these aren’t huge losses, however the drivers do not seem to be able to wake from sleep. That is less than desirable, obviously (Needless to say if you’re a video editor working in Final Cut all day, hold off on this hack), and it’s incredibly frustrating that we more than likely won’t be seeing drivers from NVIDIA before the new year. While one could assume that the drivers are delayed due to a combination of the significant change to the graphics stack in Mojave along with the tremendously small market share NVIDIA Macs possess, there have been rumors that Apple have been the ones dragging their feet in signing them. I won’t speculate here, but I will say that as a user, Apple has enough vendor lock-in across the platform, and it would be greatly appreciated if we could have some say in what we put into our modular towers. One can only hope that this philosophy is embodied when the new Mac Pros come next year.