I just updated my Mojave machine to Security Update 2020-006 but my bridgeOS has not updated, it remains on 18P50347c which I got when I tried Big Sur DP4/PB1 on 7 August 2020? I don't have any other Macs so "downgrading (from beta to release) bridgeOS using Apple Configurator 2" isn't an option. How can I get the latest bridgeOS on my Mojave Mac mini?

I need some help to revive a MacBook Air Retina / Intel, early 2020 (T2 chip). I bought it from the former owner, who did not use it for a year, and the machine did not start anymore. I finally managed to start it up in safe mode after charging it overnight, NVRAM and SMC reset, with the battery warning sign visible. The mouse was moving very slowly over the screen. It could not normally start. As I could not lock in, I finally put it in DFU mode and managed to make a restore from Apple Configurator 2 with an iMac (MacOS 12). It now starts only in Internet Recovery mode. When I have to choose the wifi network, it gets stuck after password entry, with an endless spinning wheel. The fans run at high speed and mouse behavior is very sluggish. Even after hours, no progress. The machine is cleared off from iCloud by the former owner. I ordered a replacement battery from a 3rd party vendor and it has exactly the same behavior. The machine gets off immediately after I unplug the power cable. I managed once to start Internet Recovery in Ethernet mode. With a USB C > USB A dongle and an apple USB A > Ethernet dongle. For the first time the progress bar appeared and showed progressively up to 24:00 (min) before getting stuck again. Questions: Diagnosis ? Bad Battery only and bad replacement battery? Or other hardware issues? Any chance that the battery and speed problems resolve after internet recovery? Therapy? Another replacement battery? The vendor is not so willing to replace it. I wanted to retry internet recovery again with ethernet, ideally buying a Thunderbolt 3 > 2 and a Thunderbolt 2 > Ethernet adapter to make this work best.

The Mac mini (2018) Macmini8,1 is running Linux with rEFInd. The mini has 2 usb-a 10 Gb/s ports, and 4 usb-c 10 Gb/s ports **Problem:** On usb-c ports, "dangerous" devices are not recognized by the kernel, they are ignored on plugin like nothing happened > "dangerous" devices include storage Samsung T5/T7 or networking > Realtek 8153 > > "safe" devices like mouse, keyboard and display works Everything works on usb-a ports uname --kernel-release 5.8.0-36-generic to run with T2: * applesmc brcmfmac blacklisted * tg3 so buggy it is not used * csrutil disable * Startup Security Utility: No Security, Allow booting from external or removable media **How can any type USB device be made to work on usb-c ports?** February 1, 2021: it is discovered that only devices that decide to use 480 Mb/s or slower work. No device selecting 5 or 10 Gb/s will appear in dmesg --human --follow February 5, 2021: The usb ports that are capped at 480 Mb/s are off the Thunderbolt controllers:

lspci -knns7e:0
7e:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] [8086:15ec] (rev 06)
    Subsystem: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] [8086:0000]
    Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
    Kernel modules: xhci_pci
lspci -knns8:0
08:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] [8086:15ec] (rev 06)
    Subsystem: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 4C 2018] [8086:0000]
    Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
    Kernel modules: xhci_pci    ​ 

hi I am trying to remove or disable Startup Security Utility in terminal, does anyone know any commands that can do this so I can reinstall from an external device, for some reason internet recovery is not working. I can get into terminal.

I've been doing a bit of research about FileVault and APFS recently, but it still confuses me. I learned about the two types of recovery keys for FileVault, personal recovery key and institutional recovery key. According to what I read, the personal one only works on the same device (if the Mac is broken, access will be impossible) and the institutional one requires an MDM, a PKI, and needs to be configured before the volume is encrypted. Is there any device-independent recovery key that I can export from an unlocked volume and use for unlocking on any device? Windows Bitlocker has this function and it is very handy, because in many situation you do not have to mess around with protectors or cryptousers, TPM/T2-chips and similar device-specific mechanisms. One basically exports the AES-key of the drive or something fully equivalent. I read about a "secure token" but I did not really understand it. Could this be what I am thinking about?

I need to re-intall macOS Catalina on my Mac Mini 2018. SSD was wiped out. ## Trial 1: Internet Recovery (Alt + Shift + Cmd + R or Alt + R) ## *Disclaimer: I have a Gigabit Internet connection, without any known issues.* All looks good until: **macOS could not be installed on your computer** Running Apple Diagnostic (obviously?) ends up in: **No issues found.** Rebooting and retrying the installation then always (no matter how many times I try) leads to: **macOS could not be installed on your computer** ## Trial 2: USB key ## From another Mac, I downloaded Catalina and made a USB key:

softwareupdate -d --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.15.6
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/UNTITLED

But, trying to reboot on the USB key: **Security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk.** And when trying to change the said setting: **No administrator was found.** ## Trial 3: dd ## Yes, I even tried from the terminal to dump the USB installation key into the SSD, hoping it would reboot on it ... but no, it ignores the SSD and restarts instead on the Internet Recovery mode. So I tried restoring a dump of a full Monterey hard drive, from another working Mac. The Mac Mini boots on Recovery Mode, a User / Password is requested and accepted (maybe due to the fact that the Monterey drive is encrypted?). I then try a recovery installation of Monterey but: **The operation couldn't be completed. (com.apple.BuildInfo.preflight.error error21.)** I still try to unlock USB port, as the login / password was already asked and accepted, but: **The current RecoveryOS has no access to security settings.** With nothing left to lose, I wipe out the SSD with Disk Utility, and retry the Monterey recovery installation. I accept the software license agreement, and then: **An error occurred loading the update.** ## Trial 4: Apple Time Machine ## I did a Time Machine backup from the other Mac (macOS Monterey) to an external hard drive. The Time Machine hard drive is well recognized on the Mac Mini, but: **No macOS system backups were found.** I guess Apple Time Machine backs up only the Data partition from Monterey, not the OS partition ... So, I tried with a Time Machine backup of High Sierra (without separate Data partition): **You can't restore this backup because this Mac does not support booting from HFS.** ## Trial 5: Disk Utility Backup / Restore Image ## I backed up the Monterey full drive as a dmg image from the other Mac, and tried to restore it on the Mac Mini SSD. I select the image file, but the "Restore" button is completely unresponsive: I can only click "Cancel". I feel trapped in an Apple loop: I cannot allow booting on USB because the disk is clean without any administrator account, and I cannot create an administrator account because I cannot install macOS from an USB key. Thank you in advance for any suggestion. P.S.: SSD is soldered, so no option here to install from a different computer.

I see a post which is **12 years old**: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/57597/how-to-fix-broken-efi-partition?rq=1 **System**: Macbook Pro 2019 with Intel & T2, upgraded to Sonoma. **Objective**: Dual boot with T2Linux Fedora using https://t2linux.org/ **Trouble**: I accidentally deleted the EFI System Partition on MacOS. Now, I do have EFI for T2Linux (EFI NO NAME), but NOT with macOS. Now, with T2Linux Fedora, it requires first to update 'firmware.sh' in MacOS. **Deleted EFI in MacOS:** #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1 **Current diskutil list: (1 TB partition: 400 GB for MacOS, and 600 GB for Linux):** me@mes-MacBook-Pro ~ % diskutil list /dev/disk0 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0 1: Apple_APFS Container disk1 400.2 GB disk0s1 2: EFI NO NAME 629.1 MB disk0s2 3: Linux Filesystem 1.1 GB disk0s3 4: Linux Filesystem 598.3 GB disk0s4 **Current GPT Partition:** me@mes-MacBook-Pro ~ % sudo gpt -r show disk0 start size index contents 0 1 PMBR 1 1 Pri GPT header 2 4 Pri GPT table 6 76800 76806 97715079 1 GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC 97791885 115 97792000 153600 2 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B 97945600 262144 3 GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4 98207744 146068480 4 GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4 244276224 36 244276260 4 Sec GPT table 244276264 1 Sec GPT header **Output of Attempt to Install firmware.sh on MacOS:** me@mes-MacBook-Pro ~ % bash ~/Downloads/firmware.sh Detected macOS Mounting the EFI partition Volume on disk0s1 failed to mount because it appears to be an APFS Physical Store (or is the APFS Container already mounted?) See "diskutil apfs list" **EDIT: I tried the following Steps: But again, NO EFI was created:** # diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0 unmount of all voulmes on disk0 was successful # gpt remove -i 1 /dev/disk0 /dev/disk0s1 removed # gpt add -b 76806 -i 1 -s 97715079 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0s1 /dev/disk0s1 added # diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk0s1 Finished file system repair on disk0s1 # diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk0s1 voulmes() mounted successfully **EDIT: Other Details (Asked by @David Anderson):** me@mes-MacBook-Pro ~ % sw_vers ProductName: macOS ProductVersion: 14.4.1 BuildVersion: 23E224 me@mes-MacBook-Pro ~ % csrutil status System Integrity Protection status: disabled. **I am NOT good in linux**. So, can some one guide me in very simple steps, please?

**System**: Macbook Pro 2019, Intel, T2, 16 GB RAM, No USB port (Using VIVA USB hub), Ventura 13.6.5 **Issues**: (1) Hash Volume Mismatch (2) Not re-installing MacOS (3) Bootable USB Drive is NOT showing up **Question**: How can I completely wipe out MacOS, and install Linux?

Does having a Mac with a T2 chip automatically prevent someone from booting into Recovery mode or Target Disk Mode or from accessing disk utility or a terminal without having a user's password credential? Finally, are there any stipulations associated with having FileVault turned on or off on Mac with the T2 chip, with respect to booting the device into something like Target Disk Mode?

*This is a rather peculiar situation as I got locked out of my own laptop. Keep in mind I'm in IT so I know what I'm doing.* **The setup:** I own a Macbook Pro 2019 with T2 (with purchase documents and so on). I don't use iCloud at all, never set it up, ever. 1. (classic)Filevault 2 was off. (or at least I never enabled it) 2. No firmware password. 3. T2 security was set to none and allow booting from USB. (I can boot Windows, Linux just fine) It's my machine so no security was needed. I have an admin account on it I know what the password is 100%. **The problem:** I used Migration Assistant to import some old user from an older mac. Encountered a bug where I couldn't delete the user completely (it's an obscure bug with users created in High Sierra) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8087348?sortBy=best Rebooted and now Mac is in a reboot loop. **What doesn't work:** 1. I can hold Option (Alt) to see the drive and try to boot from it. (tries to boot restarts) 2. I can hold Cmd + R to try to get into Recovery. (tries to boot restarts) 3. I can hold download Internet Recovery. (tries to boot restarts) **What works:** I can put the Macbook Pro in DFU mode and tried to Revive. It works but has same symptoms. I don't want to Restore and Erase it, i think that would give me back the machine but trash the key on T2 losing the data. What's on it has enough sentimental value for me to just shelf the mac and wait for a solution. I can hold Option (Alt) and boot Windows setup, any linux distro (nixos...) etc but they have limited support for T2. I can boot into Target Disk Mode and with my other Mac connect to it asks for a password (none of my known passwords work). (I can access part of the drive like the EFI partition, Recovery and Preboot volume are unecypted) Apparently T2 enables encryption on the OS and Data volumes all the time, 'diskutil list' shows then as Encrypted No (encrypted at rest) and now can't boot and unlock the drive even though it was running fine before I restarted. **Conclusion:** Scraping in the Preboot volume which mounts as Read Only I found some info. The user i was trying to import has become the only user that can decrypt the drive with an "admin" password. With the user partially gone I'm thinking it has some problem decrypting the OS and Data Volumes. Somehow Preboot is no longer in sync with the actual setup. My family data is there I can't get to it. Ideas on what to try? From what I gather T2 should unlock the drive on boot, I think it tries, fails and resets. **Results so far:** Managed to unlock the drive on another machine via Target Disk Mode with the temporary password given during migration to the 'high sierra' non admin user. It says unlocked in terminal but it doesn't seem to mount. I restarted the machine fine a couple of times after the Migration completed so I'm thinking the failed mount has something to with the fact I tried to delete said user?

I broke my laptop some how (I think from overheating). I dual-boot linux on a Macbook that has got a T2 chip. I can't boot up MacOS, but for some reason linux does. I've got a couple of files in my MacOS that I really need. My first thought was to try and mount the apfs partition in linux to get the files. None of the online tools for this worked except for linux-apfs-rw which was only able to mount most of the root directory but not the home directory. I've heard T2 chips security prevents you from reading the contents of the apfs but not sure if that's true. Would anyone know of a way to extract the files or mount the full apfs partition? If I need to provide more information please ask!

I just got my self a used MacBook Pro 2020 with the T2 Chip. I’m wondering how secure is it to use the Mac. I heard about a security breach in the t2 Chip what means there could be malware on the chip. Does that malware get removed by updating the macOS / reinstalling macOS ? What steps should I 100% do before using it ? Should I reinstall bridgeos? Would be interesting to know.

I have a 2019 MacBook Air with Touch ID and was wondering if the new 24" iMac Touch ID keyboard will work with my computer. I know for sure that it works with all other Apple Silicon computers, but what about computers with the Apple T2 chip. When I use my Mac with my external monitor my unlock with Apple Watch doesnt always work and putting in the password is hassle especially when I am in a hurry Thanks in advance!

When I was going to reinstall a fresh copy of macOS Catalina on my MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) , unfortunately I deleted all partitions instead of erasing them. As my internet connection is so unstable as much as I repeated installing the OS from the net, it was failing with different errors usually related to the network errors or usually it says can't decode raw data. I created a bootable media flash drive by these steps https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201372 . Now when I want to boot the device from the USB drive, it says "Security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk". I waned to allow my Mac booting from external media (as this link https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208198) but It shows me the error: "Authentication Needed - You will need to authenticate as an Administrator to change the boot security settings." And when I click on Enter macOS Password I see this error : "Recovery is trying to change system settings. No administrator was found." Notes: * I had never set a password for my mac T2 security * I had forgotten to sign out my apple id from the MacBook Pro but I've removed my device from my apple account after that. * The MacBook Pro doesn't have any operating system now, so I can't use solutions like rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone I've searched a lot and watched lots of youtube videos but didn't succeed anything yet. How can I fix my issue to allow me boot from the flash drive?

I have a Macbook Pro 2018 (T2 Chip) failed to update while update the MacOS Mojave. Currently, when I turn it on, it will have a flashing folder. Here are what I tried so far: 1. Using Apple Configurator: I put the brick Macbook Pro 2018 into DFU mode and perform Revise/Revive. After completed the Revive/Restore, the Macbook restart and went back to Flashing folder. 2. Go to MacOS Recovery Mode: performed reinstall MacOS but I failed after 3 minutes of the installation process. The Mac automatically restart and go back to the flashing folder. 3. Go to MacOS Recovery Mode: applied the TimeMachine Backup but It's also failed after 3-5 mins processing and the brick Macbook restart back to the flashing folder. 4. Boot from external USB: the security setting didn't allow me to boot from the external device. However, after go to Security Utility Boot, It said No administrator found on the Macbook. 5. Using FirstAid to repair the SSD (current SMART status is I'm wondering if anyone experienced this issue and have any solution to come across? This is a gift from my relative for awhile and we couldn't retrieve the proof of purchase to go to Apple Service. Thank you.

Consider the following situation: > You want to update your Mac, iPhone, and/or iPad to the latest software, kernel, and firmware version using Software Update. However, the only internet connection that you have access to is a *public, unencrypted (open) WiFi network*. You do not have a physical copy of the software update (i.e., on a disk, etc.) that you can use to update your device. **I'm wondering if there's any risk that my connection could be MITM-ed, intercepted, or otherwise attacked so that a malicious actor could download and install an unauthentic operating system, kernel, and/or firmware image to my device.** In addition to the above scenario: 1. **What if the WiFi connection is encrypted but untrusted?** For example, what if you are using a café WiFi network that is encrypted with WPA, but the password for that network is posted on the café's website? What if the WiFi network has a password of 1234567890 or something that could be easily guessed by an attacker? *Is there any difference in the security of updating software over a completely open WiFi network and one that is encrypted but untrusted?* 2. **Does using a VPN make the update more secure?** Does Software Update connect to Apple servers over a VPN configured through an app? If so, does this help ensure that the connection to the software update server cannot be intercepted and that the content of the update cannot be changed? 3. **Is it safer to update an iPhone or iPad by wiring it via USB to a Mac? Does it make a difference if that Mac is connected to the Internet via a VPN?** The [Apple website](https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/security/secf683e0b36/web) mentions that "[f]or greater software update security, when the device to be upgraded is physically connected to a Mac, a full copy of iOS or iPadOS is downloaded and installed," but it is not clear why this makes the update more secure. Are over-the-air updates (where "only the components required to complete an update are downloaded") less secure and/or not cryptographically signed? If there's anything else that you think may be helpful, please feel free to include it in your answer.

I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 15 inch with touch bar. I change the volume a lot when watching youtube videos. This makes the Touch Bar lag and then crash. This has been a major issue since I was listening to songs through iTunes and the Touch Bar lagged off while I was changing the volume. Just to try to get it to respond I tried increasing it the max and min. The volume throttle didn't move so I assumed it wasn't responding. But after about 2 minutes music was played at full volume. Is there any way I can reset the Touch Bar just like I have the ability to reset NVRAM. I am aware that the touch bar is totally controlled by T2 chip. So I think resetting the T2 chip will most probably solve the issue.

Every year or so I like to do a fresh install of Mac OS on my machines. The method I've always used is to download the OS from the App Store, create an installable USB with Terminal, boot into the USB, format the internal storage and then install. This has not worked on my most recent Mac, which is a 2018 Intel Mac mini (the only one I have with a T2 chip). It first wouldn't let me boot into the USB due to a security restriction, so I rebooted into recovery mode and formatted the internal storage there. Before restarting I attempted to restart to the USB with Target Disk Mode, but it wouldn't pick up my USB within about a minute of waiting (maybe I should've waited longer) so I just restarted it normally and tried once again to boot to the USB on startup. Every time I select the USB device on startup, it falls back to internet recovery mode. The yellow USB drive icon just instantly turns into the globe and prompts me to connect to WiFi. I've tried this method a few times but it sounds like any blip in the connection causes it to give up, and this has happened to me 4 times now. Is there any reason why a T2 Mac with no OS would not boot to a USB device? Is there anything else I can do besides retry internet recovery until it finally downloads everything in one go? Thanks! **UPDATE: I did eventually get Internet Recovery working. [See my answer below](https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/419888/356520)**

I'm considering buying the 16 inch 2019 MacBook Pro because I need a powerful x86 machine that can run macOS, but I would also be interested in running other operating systems on this computer. I know that the T2 chip is tied to the SSD, and I was wondering if the following configuration is possible, and how I would go along doing it: - 2 partitions on the Apple SSD, one running Catalina, and one running Windows 10 through Bootcamp - 1 external SSD with 2 partitions, one with Big Sur, and one with Ubuntu If this is possible, how would I do this, and what problems would I face (WiFi, audio, etc)? If this isn't possible, what would I need to do to be able to run these 4 operating systems on this machine, or what other powerful x86 Macs would you recommend? Edit: I don't want to run virtual machines because graphics performance is bad when the VM doesn't have access to the GPU, and graphics are one of the main reasons I would want to upgrade to the 16 inch. I also don't want to spend money on VMware and install it on my Bootcamp partition, just to find out GPU passthrough doesn't deliver the level of performance I would want.

On reboot it showed the cannot boot from hard drive ? screen. I rebooted into recovery mode but it fails to mount the drive. I can see the drive there with the correct details. It says the following: Could not mount "disk0s2" (com.apple.Diskmanagement.dis enter error -119930868.) I googled the error but get lots of posts relating to external drives etc. Nothing in any posts I've come across has helped. When i run FistAid on the drive it get the following: Repairing Storage System Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/disk02s2 warning: nx_block_count is 488475719, while device block count error: object (oid 0x1): o_cksum (0xbd26e8008dccb575) is invalid for object Checking the container superblock. Storage system exit code is 8. Storage system verify or repair failed. :(-69716) Operation failed. If i do "disk util apfs list" in terminal i get the following: Container ERROR -69808 APFS Container reference: disk1 Size (Capacity Ceiling): ERROR -69620 Capacity in use by volumes: ERROR -69620 Capacity not allocated: ERROR -69620 +-< Physical Store disk0s2 APFS Physical Store Disk: disk0s2 Size: 1894999998464 B (1.9 TB) I need some photos and files off the drive so if anyone can help it would be very much appreicated!