OpenCore

OpenCore is basically a program that gets ran by the firmware (the BIOS/UEFI) which starts macOS.

It has the ability to apply patches, add drivers, and/or spoof the device information beforehand.

Downloading OpenCore

Let’s start by visiting its GitHub repository, located here.

Tip

A Git repository is basically a code archive, holding different revisions of it. Git is not necessarily GitHub. GitHub is just an extended and graphical interface to it. If you want to learn more about Git, search it on the internet as it is a very widely used tool in software development.

Head to the release section. Quite obviously it is the project’s releases. Here we can find each release’s different files and maybe change log. We’re only interested in the build artefacts associated with the latest release right now

Tip

A build artefact is the end result of code after compilation, a process involving the “conversion” of human-readable code into a language understood by computers, called machine code.

The latest release is always located at the top. At the bottom of the release “card” reside the files associated with this release. You can see both RELEASE and DEBUG builds.

Tip

An optimised build, aka release build, is a build type where the code is optimised in the compilation process, speeding up execution and removing debugging information. In contrast, an unoptimised debug build contains more debugging information and logs, but is significantly slower than an optimised build. Use debug builds only when troubleshooting.

We will grab the debug build for now so we’ll be able to diagnose any problems that may arise later in the process. Click (on the debug build) to start the download.

Organising the files and preparing the EFI folder

Once it finishes, extract its contents somewhere organised so you can keep track of everything.

The contents of the Drive folder will be later copied to your USB. Copy that EFI folder from OpenCorePkg/X64/EFI. It is OpenCore itself.

Afterwards, copy Sample.plist to EFI/OC with Config.plist as the name. This will be your OpenCore configuration which will be edited for our system further down the line.

You should now have a layout similar to the following

• DirectoryOCStuff

  • DirectoryOpenCorePkg

    • …
  • DirectoryDrive

    • DirectoryEFI

      • DirectoryOC

        • OpenCore.efi
        • Config.plist
        • …
      • …
    • …
  • …

With that in mind, congratulations! You now know what OpenCore is, how to navigate the GitHub UI in order to download a project’s build from the release page, and how to keep your hackintosh adventure organised.