NullMoth's free Nvidia driver runs Metal 3 on an RTX 5060 in macOS Sequoia, with SIP and Secure Boot switched offNullMoth's free Nvidia driver runs Metal 3 on an RTX 5060 in macOS Sequoia, with SIP and Secure Boot switched off

A developer publishing as NullMoth released a free third-party driver on 7 October that lets Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards run macOS Sequoia's desktop and Metal 3 on Intel systems.

The code went up on GitHub at 08:14 UTC as version 1.0.0, with a 1.0.1 update just after 11:40 UTC, and AppleInsider reported it that afternoon. The project's own documentation is the primary source here. No outlet or independent tester has yet verified its claims, and Apple and Nvidia have said nothing about it.

What does the driver do, and on which hardware?

According to the README, the driver targets RTX cards that use Nvidia's GSP firmware, but it has been tested on exactly one machine: a PC with an Intel Core Ultra 5 225F and an RTX 5060, running macOS 15.7 through OpenCore, the bootloader used to run macOS on non-Apple hardware. Version 1.0.1 adds macOS 26 Tahoe support that the developer marks as beta and not yet tested on hardware. Nothing in the project says it has been tried on a real Mac Pro, although AppleInsider suggests Intel Mac Pro owners could benefit. It does nothing for Apple silicon Macs.

The developer lists desktop compositing, Metal 3 including ray tracing and mesh shaders, Core ML, Core Image, OpenCL and OpenGL as working. The design is layered: a plugin translates Metal shader code into SPIR-V, the format Vulkan uses; that feeds Mesa's NVK, the open source Vulkan driver for Nvidia cards; and underneath sit four kernel extensions ported from Nvidia's open GPU kernel modules, loading Nvidia's own firmware unmodified.

What does installing it require?

A lot of switched-off security. The README requires System Integrity Protection to be partly disabled so unsigned kernel extensions can load, boot arguments that weaken Apple Mobile File Integrity, and OpenCore's Secure Boot model set to Disabled, because Apple's Secure Boot refuses kernel extensions Apple did not sign. The installer also adds a removal entry to the boot menu, a recovery daemon, and crash report and log uploading. The code is free to read but mostly under the PolyForm Noncommercial licence, which is not an open source licence in the usual sense.

Our take

Nvidia cards have had no working macOS driver since High Sierra in 2017. Nvidia said in 2018 that it could not release one without Apple's approval, and Apple never gave it. A single developer getting Metal 3 running on a current RTX card by stacking a shader translator on top of Linux's Nvidia stack is a genuine technical achievement, and it shows how much of the old barrier was policy rather than engineering.

It is also very nearly too late. Tahoe is the last macOS for Intel, Apple silicon Macs accept no third-party GPU drivers at all, and Apple's own external graphics support still requires an Intel Mac, which is why wireless GPU boxes for the Mac remain a workaround. The audience is Hackintosh builders and owners of the 2019 Mac Pro, the same group keeping older Intel hardware alive with OpenCore Legacy Patcher's Tahoe beta, and it will not grow.

APPDOOK would not install this on any machine that holds work or personal data. It asks for every protection that stops malicious kernel code to be turned off, so that kernel code from a GitHub account created in late September can run with full privileges, and it uploads logs by design. The uninstall bug fixed in 1.0.1 is a reminder of how early this is. On a spare test box, with a card already to hand, it is an interesting experiment and nothing more yet.