Mac OS Catalina Hackintosh Clover Walkthrough 10.15 Install

Step-by-step walkthrough of installing macOS Catalina on a hackintosh using the Clover EFI Bootloader method.

Catalina Hackintosh Clover Prerequisites

To reach a point where this guide works and makes sense you must have first:

Step 1 – Booting the Catalina flash drive Installer

After doing the above steps restart your computer and boot from the UEFI partition of the flash drive by either selecting it as a temporary boot device or setting it as priority in BIOS settings.

If the USB drive isn’t set as the default boot volume in BIOS you can change the temporary boot device when the boot screen appears. Usually the button that needs to be spammed is F8, F10, F11, or F12. When the temporary selection screen appears Select UEFI : (USB Device Name).

1. You are now in the Clover Menu. Use the arrow keys to verify Boot macOS Install from Install macOS Catalina is selected
2. Press Enter
3. Installer will now slowly load… At first you will seen the Apple loading bar below, then you will see a blank grey screen briefly, then the Apple loading bar once again and then back to the grey screen again where the installer will finally appear.

Step 2 – Disk Utility Partitioning for macOS Catalina

When the installer loads we will want to properly format the disk as GUID for hackintosh usability before beginning the install.

1. Press Continue when the installer appears
2. Select your language
3. Select Disk Utility  from the install menu
4. Select Show All Devices from the drop down menu by pressing the View button at the top left top left corner of the Disk Utility window. (Note: NVME drive not showing?)
5. Select the disk you will be installing macOS and either select Partition to add space for macOS or Erase if you want to start clean
6. If you get the Apple File System Space Sharing popup select the Always partition checkbox and click Partition
7. Disk Drive Settings:
   • Name: (It can be named anything you want)
   • Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
   • Scheme: GUID Partition Map
8. Click Partition or Erase when ready: 
9. Quit Disk Utility after successfully reformatting or partitioning the drive for Catalina. 

Step 3 – Install macOS Catalina 10.15

Now that the disk is formatted as a GUID partition map its ready for macOS to be installed on an empty partition.

1. Select Install macOS from the main menu
2. Click Continue
3. Click Agree for the Software Terms Licenese Agreement
4. Click Agree second agreement prompt
5. Select the Drive macOS will be installed on: 
6. Click Install and wait

Step 3 – Complete the Catalina Install

There will be an automatic restart after the last step above is completed. When that happens make sure you boot back into the Clover Boot Manager to continue to with the install.

If the first part of the install was successful there will be a second boot option in the Clover menu.

1. Select Boot macOS Install from “Hackintosh”
2. The installer will load up and you’ll see an apple logo and loading bar  briefly before an automatic restart happens: 
3. Reenter the Clover Menu on Restart: 
4. Select Boot macOS Install from “Hackintosh” again
5. The same apple logo and loading bar will appear again, but time this time it will reach the end.

Step 4 – Catalina Hackintosh First Boot

When macOS Catalina is successfully installed on a hackintosh the name of the second option in the Clover Boot Manager will change:

1. Select Boot macOS from “Hackintosh” and the Catalina will begin booting for the first time
2. Select Language and click Continue
3. Select Keyboard and click Continue
4. Click Continue for Data & Privacy
5. If prompted select My computer does not connect to the Internet and click Continue
6. Select Don’t transfer any information now
7. (Option) Sign into an Apple ID or click Set Up Later at the top
8. Click Agree to the Terms and Conditions
9. Fill out Computer Account macOS login profile and click Continue
10. (Optional) Choose Customize Settings at Express Set Up if you don’t want to be monitored through Location and Siri.
11. Choose Your Look and click Continue
12. Welcome to macOS Catalina!

Step 5 – Copying the EFI Partition from the Flash Drive to the macOS Catalina Drive

Now that we’re in macOS we want to be able to boot macOS without needing to have the USB flash drive plugged in. To do that all we have to do is copy and paste the EFI folder on the UEFI partition of the flash drive to the UEFI partition of the hackintosh disk.

1. Open Clover Configurator
2. Mount the EFI of the USB Flash Drive
3. Press Open EFI or navigate to the EFI location of the flash drive in Finder
4. Copy the EFI Folder onto your desktop
5. Open Finder and Eject All the Flash Drive
6. Using Clover Configurator Mount the EFI of the drive disk you just installed Mac OS on
7. Press Open EFI or navigate to the EFI location of the drive in Finder
8. Delete the mostly empty EFI Folder located on the mounted drive
9. Paste or Move the EFI  from your Desktop to the EFI partition of the drive /Volumes/EFI/ the existing EFI on the disk

You will now be able to boot macOS without the USB Flash Drive

Fully Working Hackintosh

After macOS is running on your hackintosh there may be things that aren’t working such as audio, ethernet and wifi and graphics acceleration. If you followed one of our Build Guides return to that guide in order to get everything working. Otherwise check out the guides on how to get various things working.