Tahoe Sound Support with VoodooHDA

Tip

This method is much simpler than using the AppleHDA root patching method.

Background

macOS 26 Tahoe removed support for HDA Audio as the only supported Intel Macs are now T2 based which provides the sound capabilities to the machine. The AppleHDA.kext, which is used for non-T2 audio, was removed in beta 2 of Tahoe. To add VMware HDA sound back to Tahoe, the system will need to be modified after installation to install the VoodooHDA.kext. This KEXT cannot be loaded via OpenCore as it is dependent on other KEXTs to function correctly.

Step 1 - Getting Ready to Install

The 3rd party audio driver KEXT is from VoodooHDA. There is a project, VoodooHDA-Tahoe, to create a macOS installer package for the VoodooHDA KEXT and control panel. This project does not provide a built installer package so I have built it and included it in the OC4VM project. It can be found in the distribution folder /packages/VoodooHDA-Tahoe.pkg. Copy this file to the macOS VM before we go through the installation steps.

Step 2 - Disable SIP

The SIP settings will need to be changed to allow successful patching as the folders we need to modify are under SIP protection. The SIP value we need is the 0xA85. This is not a standard value that can be easily set with csrutil in Recovery mode, so we will use the OpenCore UEFI shell to set it.

Boot the VM and at the selector screen press the SPACE key to stop the automatic boot.

Using the RIGHT ARROW key select the "OpenShell" icon and press ENTER.

Wait for the shell to initialise and then we wll run the CsrUtil.efi tool to set the SIP value. If the VM is built with the supplied templates this file will be found on the FS7: mapped drive. If you have a bespoke VM you will need to find the mapping for the OC4VM drive and replace FS7: with the drive mapping for your system.

At the prompt we will first check the current status by running:

fs7:\EFI\OC\Tools\CsrUtil.efi status

Next the same tool will be used to set the 0xA85 value needed for root patching.

fs7:\EFI\OC\Tools\CsrUtil.efi disable 0xA85

Finally we will reboot back into macOS by running:

reset

Step 3 - Installing VoodooHDA

We can now install the VoodooHDA package in the VM. Using the System Information and System Settings apps we can see there is no audio device available to the VM.

Double click the Voodoo-Tahoe.pkg to start the installation and click "Continue" and then authorise the package to update the system.

When the installer completes it will prompt you to authorise the extension in "System Settings".

Click the "Allow" button in the "Security" section.

Authorise the extension.

And restart the system.

Checking with the System Information and System Settings apps we can see there is now an audio device available to the VM.