Intel Macs with the Apple T2 chip on Omarchy

Intel Macs with the Apple T2 Security Chip get more installer attention than any other Apple hardware on Omarchy. The T2 sits between the CPU and the keyboard, trackpad, audio, webcam, storage and Wi-Fi, so a stock Arch kernel sees almost nothing. Omarchy handles this by swapping in the community linux-t2 kernel and a small pile of quirks.

Status on 4.0.4

Verified against the v4.0.4 source tree and against issues filed on 4.0.2, 4.0.3 and 4.0.4.

Working for most reporters: internal keyboard and trackpad, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, speakers, fan control, the webcam, and the Touch Bar. On issue 8271 a reporter running a 2019 T2 MacBook Pro confirmed the Touch Bar, the Escape key and the webcam all still work after an ordinary install.

Unreliable: suspend and resume, hybrid graphics on the 16-inch models, USB hot-plug, and the 2020 27-inch iMac, whose only display adapter is AMD. Battery charge limiting is not reachable at all on T2, because the machine has no SMC transport the kernel can use (issue 10121).

One 4.0.4 detail matters here. The release shipped the bespoke linux-omarchy kernel to everyone else, but the migration that installs it exits immediately if linux-t2 is installed or the running kernel name contains -t2. T2 Macs stay on linux-t2. A later migration installs linux-t2-headers if the installer skipped them.

The manual chapter is Mac support. Its T2 model list does not include the 2020 27-inch iMac, which is one reason issue 12197 exists.

What Omarchy does automatically

Everything below runs from install/hardware/apple/ during install, and the matching migrations repair older machines.

fix-t2.sh matches lspci output against PCI IDs 106b:1801 and 106b:1802. When it hits, it installs linux-t2, linux-t2-headers, apple-t2-audio-config, apple-bcm-firmware and t2fanrd, enables t2fanrd.service, and writes four files:

• /etc/modules-load.d/t2.conf loading t2bce_vhci and hci_bcm4377
• /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/apple-t2.conf adding t2bce_vhci usbhid hid_apple hid_generic xhci_pci xhci_hcd to the initramfs
• /etc/limine-entry-tool.d/t2-mac.conf appending intel_iommu=on iommu=pt pm_async=off mem_sleep_default=deep to the kernel command line
• /etc/t2fand.conf with a linear curve from 55C to 75C for two fans

fix-brcmfmac-supplicant.sh writes options brcmfmac feature_disable=0x82000 to /etc/modprobe.d/brcmfmac.conf. Broadcom’s firmware runs the WPA handshake itself and fails against access points in WPA2 and WPA3 transition mode, which users read as a rejected password. The flag hands the handshake back to wpa_supplicant. Since 4.0.0 this covers Macs without a T2 as well, gated on the Broadcom PCI IDs rather than the T2 bridge.

omarchy-hw-display skips appletb_backlight and prefers gmux_backlight, so brightness keys drive the panel instead of the Touch Bar.

Note what is not installed: tiny-dfr. Omarchy’s own test suite asserts that fix-t2.sh leaves it out and that the ISO no longer caches it. The Touch Bar uses the kernel’s in-tree driver.

Two more Apple scripts run but target pre-T2 and T1 machines, not yours: fix-spi-keyboard.sh (MacBook8,1 through MacBookPro14,3) and fix-suspend-nvme.sh, which disables d3cold on the NVMe at PCI address 0000:01:00.0.

Known problems

Issue	Models	Status	Fixed in
#12197 amdgpu SMU init fails, black screen before the LUKS prompt	iMac20,1	open
#11926 USB hot-plug dead unless the device was plugged in at boot	MacBookPro16,1	open
#6862 deep never resumes, s2idle hangs on the second suspend	MacBookPro15,1, MacBookPro16,1	open
#9609 gmux leaves the panel on the AMD dGPU and hangs at session start	MacBookPro16,1	open
#3883 keyboard dead during setup, no wake from suspend, webcam not detected	2018 to 2020 T2 laptops	open
#10815 trackpad disable_while_typing ignored, trackpad classified external	MacBookPro15,2, MacBookAir9,1, MacBookPro16,1	open
#6833 keyboard layout widget switches the phantom “Apple Headset” device	all T2	open
#7347 overlay installs get a branding-only Limine config and no linux-t2 entry	MacBookPro16,3 via t2archinstall	open
#8271 full-disk install erases the Apple ESP holding T1 firmware	T1 only: 13,2 13,3 14,2 14,3	open
#10825 Touch Bar dead, macbook12-spi-driver DKMS never builds	T1 MacBookPro13,3, MacBookPro14,3	open
#6559 stale suspend and fan defaults, and the pipefail false negative in the T2 check filed as #6608	all T2	fixed	4.0.0
#6558 brightness stuck at 100 percent, backlight resolved to the Touch Bar	Touch Bar T2 laptops	fixed	4.0.0
#4402 Bluetooth menu opens and closes instantly	all T2	fixed	3.5.0
#2291 keyboard backlight keys step 1 of 512 levels, so nothing visibly changes	all T2	fixed	3.5.0

The T1 rows are here because owners of 2016 and 2017 Touch Bar Macs routinely read themselves into the T2 section of the manual. Check lspci -nn | grep 106b:180. No output means no T2.

Fixes that work

Work down this list in order.

1. Confirm the kernel. uname -r should contain -t2. If it does not, the T2 detection never fired and nothing else here applies.
2. Confirm the command line actually took. Run cat /proc/cmdline and look for mem_sleep_default=deep. On issue 1840 a commenter pointed out that if /etc/default/limine uses KERNEL_CMDLINE[default]= rather than +=, it overwrites every drop-in including t2-mac.conf. Change it to += and run sudo limine-update.
3. If suspend dies immediately rather than failing to resume, try mem_sleep_default=s2idle instead. The reporter on issue 6862 says deep never resumes on the 15,1, and one commenter adds that it kills the 16,1 outright. On the 15,1, s2idle survived exactly one cycle before Thunderbolt failed to resume. Neither mode is reliable on the 15,1 and 16,1 yet, and there is no upstream fix.
4. If brightness is pinned at 100 percent, run omarchy-hw-display. It should print gmux_backlight or intel_backlight, never appletb_backlight. If it prints the Touch Bar, your install predates 4.0.0 and needs omarchy update.
5. If Wi-Fi reports a wrong password on a WPA2 or WPA3 network, check /etc/modprobe.d/brcmfmac.conf for feature_disable=0x82000, then reboot.
6. If the Bluetooth menu closes instantly, check that /etc/modules-load.d/t2.conf lists hci_bcm4377.
7. For hybrid graphics hangs at session start on the 16-inch, the reporter on issue 9609 boots with apple_gmux.force_igd=1 and persists it as options apple-gmux force_igd=y in /etc/modprobe.d/apple-gmux.conf. A commenter on issue 6559 hit the same black screen on the Quattro edge ISO and used the same flag. It hands the panel to the integrated GPU, the reporter had not tested external displays with it, and it is a workaround, not a fix.

Do not install the facetimehd driver on a T2 machine. A contributor corrected their own earlier advice on issue 3883: the T2 webcam comes through the bridge driver and uvcvideo, both already in linux-t2, and facetimehd is for pre-T2 Broadcom cameras.

Report it

Run omarchy debug and pick the upload option. It writes /tmp/omarchy-debug.log, uploads it to logs.omarchy.org with a 24 hour expiry, and prints a URL to paste into the issue. Use omarchy debug --print --no-sudo first if you want to read it before sharing.

Add four things the T2 reports that get fixed all include: the exact model from cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_name, the output of lspci -nn | grep 106b:180, uname -r, and whether you installed from the Omarchy ISO or overlaid Omarchy onto an existing Arch install. That last one matters more than it sounds, because the overlay path is the whole subject of issue 7347.

Related

• Suspend and sleep and suspend will not resume
• Hybrid GPU laptops and hybrid GPU black screen
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio, webcam
• Intel MacBook Pro and Intel MacBook Air
• Apple Silicon and Asahi for M-series machines, which Omarchy does not support
• Report your machine