Darwin you can boot.

PureDarwin writes the pieces Apple leaves out.
Apple publishes the kernel and much of the userland.
We add the bootloader, the drivers and a desktop.

Download
Read the Book Check the Repo
Hexley in front of the Argon desktop
Hexley in front of PureDarwin 26.5 on the Argon desktop, with Terminal, Settings, System Information and Calculator. Running in QEMU, with OpenGL through virgl on the host's Radeon RX 7800 XT.

Documentation

How the build works, what lives where, how an image is assembled, per-target status, a porting guide and a debugging guide.

Handbook

Contribute

Development happens on the upstream-xnu-12377 branch, and main is frozen. Packaging is the most useful place to start, and the contribution policy explains what we accept and why.

GitHub

Community

Development happens in the open. Ask questions, watch the work, or chip in.

News

All news

What works today

PureDarwin boots to the Argon desktop on x86_64, and to a shell on arm64 in QEMU and on a growing list of boards.

  • x86_64 The Argon desktop on QEMU and real hardware, with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPU drivers. The release target.
  • arm64, QEMU virt Boots to a shell, with a Wayland image available.
  • NVIDIA Jetson TX1 arm64, Tegra X1.
  • Orange Pi Zero 3 arm64, Allwinner H618.
  • Orange Pi Zero 4 arm64, Allwinner A733.
  • And other boards in bringup

On x86_64 that means an ext4 root, wired networking and Wi-Fi with DHCP end to end, OpenGL on real GPUs, Wine running Windows GUI applications, and a compiler toolchain that runs on PureDarwin itself. It boots with UEFI, Secure Boot or a legacy BIOS.

Full status matrix, per target

Get it

These are developer previews of upstream-xnu-12377. They are test images, not releases. They will have bugs, and they are no stable version of anything. See the roadmap for what comes next.

  • puredarwin-25.5-gpu.img The Argon desktop for x86_64 with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPU drivers, Wi-Fi and the built-in apps. UEFI, including 32-bit UEFI. 1.2 GiB d81d3f4c3594aaa914a5403abfd75eac8fc9043977ab95ae98a32005502e46da
  • puredarwin-25.5-gpu-sb.img The same desktop for machines with Secure Boot on. Enroll PUREDARWIN.cer once, see the Secure Boot page. 1.2 GiB b5c23b382d56a51cccd1a6eb37e178d9f9a7580b696003124f7bcd1a2f66854d
  • puredarwin-25.5-gpu-legacy.img The same desktop for machines that boot with a legacy BIOS. 1.2 GiB 2ca1d4eac4dc180ee2c0ac065b772521b6f70774214e1fadb2697fd4d9d4ba58
  • puredarwin-25.5-minimal.img A small x86_64 image that boots to a shell, the one used for most boot testing. 322 MiB 45fd9ad5d4fb77af47a8b4d02a49a8b9cd14d54e11915d2380e879b9d3442814
  • puredarwin-arm64-rpi3-shell.mp4 Video from the 20.5 era: PureDarwin booting to a shell on a Raspberry Pi 3. 46 MiB 39693de5db495a945436d8a80da9da64e7d8434f40aaa3a28c714a138337610e

The SHA-256 above each download is of the file as served. The same list is at SHA256SUMS, so you can check a download with sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing.

Or build it yourself

Nix is the build system. On a Linux host with flakes enabled: 

git clone -b upstream-xnu-12377 https://github.com/PureDarwin/PureDarwin
cd PureDarwin
nix build .#image-minimal
nix run .#vm

No Apple files are needed. The build assembles its own SDK from open source headers, so the repository and Nix are all it takes.

Getting Started, in full

Frequently asked questions

What is Darwin?

Darwin is the open-source core of macOS and iOS: the XNU kernel plus a large part of the Unix userland, published by Apple under the Apple Public Source License. Every Mac and iPhone runs on it, but Apple only ships it as source code. There is no Darwin you can install from Apple.

What is PureDarwin, and what is it not?

PureDarwin is a community project that turns Apple's Darwin releases into a standalone, bootable operating system. We write the missing pieces ourselves: the bootloader, drivers, init and a desktop. PureDarwin is its own system. It is no macOS clone, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple. There are no proprietary Apple binaries in our images.

What can I actually do with it?

Boot a real Darwin system in QEMU or on hardware, use the Argon desktop and its apps, run Windows programs through Wine, compile software with the on-system toolchain, and explore how the XNU kernel works outside of macOS. It is a system for developers and the curious. It is not ready to be a daily driver yet. See what works today.

Can it run macOS or iOS apps?

A select few. Graphical macOS apps are built against frameworks Apple never open sourced, so PureDarwin reimplements them. Its own AppKit runs the built-in apps, and a handful of unmodified macOS apps run as well, Firefox among them. Most macOS apps do not run yet. Command-line Darwin software and open source software generally work, and Wine runs Windows GUI applications on the desktop.

Is it free? Can I contribute?

Yes. Everything we write is open source, and Apple's code stays under the APSL. Development happens in the open on GitHub. Packaging is the most useful place to start, and the contribution guide explains the rest.