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This page complements the Installation guide with instructions specific to Apple Macs. The Arch installation image supports Apple Macs with Intel processors, but neither PowerPC nor Apple Silicon processors.

Summed up, the procedure for installing Arch Linux on a Mac is:

Before proceeding with the installation of Arch Linux, follow these steps.

If only Arch Linux is desired, then format the entire disk according to Installation guide#Partition the disks. To set up dual boot, follow these steps. Once done, go to #Installation.

Macs typically have the following partition table. In Macs that use the Apple Fusion Drive, the partition scheme could be different.

To install Arch with macOS, keep these partitions, and follow these steps.

Once done, go to #Installation.

Once done, go to #Installation.

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Once done, go to #Installation.

These steps install Arch, assuming #Pre-installation and #Partitions are done.

Install one boot loader, either systemd-boot, GRUB, or rEFInd.

Apple's native EFI boot loader reads .efi files located inside the EFI system partition at /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI. Luckily, this is also the default install location for the systemd-boot binary. This means that booting linux using systemd-boot is very simple.

At the next reboot, the Apple Boot Manager, shown when holding down the option key when booting the Mac, should display Arch Linux (it will be displayed as EFI Boot as a possible boot option.

The rEFInd boot manager can boot both Arch and macOS. These steps assume macOS is still installed on a partition, and the steps of the Installation guide were completed up to Installation guide#Boot loader. Boot into Safe Mode by holding down Command-R, then disable SIP.

Boot macOS, and run the rEFInd install script,

rEFInd installed itself into Apple's boot partition, and replaced Apple's boot menu with its own. Boot into Safe Mode by holding down Command-R, and enable SIP.

Reboot without holding down any keys. Arch should be recognized as vmlinuz-linux by default. If it is not, uncomment the lines scan_all_linux_kernels and also_scan_dirs in refind.conf. For configuration, see rEFInd#refind_linux.conf. Since rEFInd by default mounts root as ro, it is recommended to create refind-linux.conf.

If you would like to use GRUB as your main boot loader and use the "boot while holding the Alt/Option key" method to go back to macOS, then install GRUB to the already-existing EFI system partition made by macOS. The process is similar to #Using the native Apple boot loader with systemd-boot (Recommended). Just follow GRUB#Installation and add --removable when running grub-install.

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Despite using UEFI, the Mac native EFI boot loader does not use the EFI system partition for booting. Instead, it looks for .efi files inside all the partitions in internal and external drives and shows them as possible boot options if certain conditions are satisfied. For example, it can detect an existing macOS installation after checking that:

This means that configuring an Arch installation to be automatically recognized by the Mac boot loader is possible. Moreover, it simply requires a properly-formatted HFS+ /boot partition and does not require meddling with the EFI system partition. The advantage of this method is that it can coexist with macOS nicely and allows to avoid other boot loaders such as rEFInd. However, this requires manual configuration. The following steps will illustrate how to perform this configuration using GRUB.

After that, remember to create a standard configuration file:

As you can see, the directory structure of the boot.efi is not correct, as the /System/Library/CoreServices directory is not supposed to be a subdirectory of the /boot/EFI/ folder. For this reason, we need to relocate the boot.efi stub in a location the Mac boot loader is able to recognize:

After that, you need to create the following file

At the next reboot, the Apple Boot Manager, shown when holding down the option key when booting the Mac, should display Arch Linux as a possible boot option. Selecting that option will boot GRUB.

Done! GRUB can now be selected on the standard Mac boot loader and you can boot into your newly installed Arch Linux.

Obviously, you can replace the Arch logo with any other icon you like.

It is possible to boot directly from GRUB in EFI mode without using rEFIt through what is known as "blessing" after placing GRUB on a separate partition. These instructions are known to work on a MacBook7,1. It is advisable to host GRUB on either a FAT32 or HFS+ partition, but ext2 or ext3 may also work.

After the GRUB install is in the desired location, the firmware needs to be instructed to boot from that location. This can be done from either an existing macOS install or an macOS install disk. The following command assumes that the GRUB install is in /efi/grub/ on an existing macOS partition:

Macs use ICC_profiles which can easily be loaded in Arch. The current profile can be shown using ColorSync Utility or System Preferences > Displays > Color. These files correspond to particular models,

Install and configure lirc. See LIRC.

Make LIRC use /dev/usb/hiddev0 or /dev/hiddev0:

Use irrecord to create a configuration file matching your remote control signals:

Start lircd.service and use irw to check if it works.

Alternatively, use the following:

Install hfsprogsAUR and use fdisk to list the partitions:

The "Unknown" partition is our macOS partition, which is located in /dev/sda2. We can use this in our fstab:

It can then be mounted, and the content accessed.

This section addresses error message when mounting hfsplus partition:

Since Yosemite, HFS+ partitions are now wrapped a CoreStorage volume. Verify that you have an CoreStorage volume.

HFS+ uses two volume headers, one 1024 bytes into the device and one 1024 from the end of the device. With the HFS+ partition wrapped in the CoreStorage volume the end of the partition is not actually 1024 bytes from the end of the /dev/sdX2 partition. To fix this you need to specify sizelimit=X when mounting.

To determine sizelimit do the following:

Sample output:

What you see now is the output of the HFS partition itself without the CoreStorage volume. Take the size in sectors (622738176 in this example) and multiply by the number of bytes in your logical sector size (512 in this example).

622738176 * 512 = 318841946112

Finally, mount your disk with the sizelimit=X option.

HFS+ partitions are not fully supported by Linux and are mounted as read-only by default. In order to write to an HFS+ partition, the safe way is to disable journaling. This can be accomplished using the macOS Disk Utility. Refer to this Apple support page for more information or try to do it from the command line:

Find your partition:

In this example we will use disk0s3 partition named as Macintosh HD. To know if journaling is activate or not you could execute:

As you can read the journaling is active. To turn off the journaling you could execute:

To verify it is done execute the info command again.

If you get noting as output, then journaling is disabled.

However, if you fail to disable journaling. You can change "auto,user,rw,exec" in /etc/fstab to "auto,user,force,rw,exec" and mount it.

If you want to access your macOS user directories from Linux, write down the UID and GID for the users. macOS begins with the first user's UID at 501 while Arch defaults to 1000.

The default UID and GID on Arch Linux for a user is 1000, adjust the following steps according to your setup.

In Leopard, the NetInfo Manager application is not present. A different set of steps is required for UID synchronization:

To synchronize your UID in Arch Linux, you are advised to perform this operation while creating a new user account. It is therefore recommended that you do this as soon as you install Arch Linux.

Now you must substitute Arch's home with macOS's home, by modify entries of /etc/fstab. In order to be able to access a macOS user's directory, only the uid and gid need to match (usernames can differ).

The startup chime volume is controlled by the EFI variable SystemAudioVolume-7c436110-ab2a-4bbb-a880-fe41995c9f82. So it can be muted with

Bear in mind that the file may have the immutable bit set by default, which will prevent even root from overwriting the file. See File permissions and attributes#File attributes. To remove it, issue the following:

After that, run the printf command and it should overwrite the file properly. Verify the file's contents and then set the immutable bit again with chattr +i once satisfied.

Alternatively, you can use a macOS install disk to mute the chime. Boot from it, select language, then click Utilities > Terminal, and enter