[GUIDE] Dell XPS 15 (9550) Mojave 10.14 / 10.15 Quick Installation

[agrafuese]

Yes  ...

 

9 hours ago, agrafuese said:

I got most of these ideas from wmchris' script ([repo]/10.15/Post-Install/Additional Steps/Hibernation/disablehibernate.sh), but I didn't use the whole script because I'm not sure if I want everything else turned off.

 

Moments like these, I start to realize that I type too much and risk people missing parts as they fall asleep while reading, haha  

 

Edit: To elaborate, I ran it originally (while I was having trouble), then I restored defaults after I fixed sleep, and then I ran those specific commands again, selectively.

Edited April 22, 2020 by agrafuese
I can't stop typing, someone help me.

[golimpio]

7 hours ago, agrafuese said:

Yes  ...

 

 

Moments like these, I start to realize that I type too much and risk people missing parts as they fall asleep while reading, haha  

 

Edit: To elaborate, I ran it originally (while I was having trouble), then I restored defaults after I fixed sleep, and then I ran those specific commands again, selectively.

Sorry, I really need to work on my reading skills  

[agrafuese]

My system fell apart again for no reason. Opened it up this morning and it wouldn't boot, just kept panicking and rebooting itself. The last thing I did before it happened was install an ICC profile for the display (the one in the repo)... I highly doubt that it had anything to do with that, though.

 

The only weird thing that I noticed just before this was that the keyboard would suddenly stop working at random times, especially at the login screen when it was time to type in my password. It seems like something corrupted the drive again, but I have no idea what it could have been. I had stopped messing with anything system-related once I got everything stabilized weeks ago, and I was only using it lightly after that point (pretty much just web browsing and graphics apps). No new software installs or anything.

 

When I went to reinstall Catalina on top of the existing install to try and fix it, it said permission denied. So, I had to format the drive and install from scratch.

 

The good news is, this time around I didn't get the "bless" error once the install was finished. I'm really not sure why this time was different. So far, it seems to be more stable this time. For example, I didn't have to delete my power management plist to get sleep/wake working, and I'm noticing fewer quirks in the system overall. Previously, I think the bless error had really messed with permissions. This time, I'm encountering less issues related to that sort of problem. 

[golimpio]

On 5/8/2020 at 4:43 PM, agrafuese said:

My system fell apart again for no reason. Opened it up this morning and it wouldn't boot, just kept panicking and rebooting itself. The last thing I did before it happened was install an ICC profile for the display (the one in the repo)... I highly doubt that it had anything to do with that, though.

 

The only weird thing that I noticed just before this was that the keyboard would suddenly stop working at random times, especially at the login screen when it was time to type in my password. It seems like something corrupted the drive again, but I have no idea what it could have been. I had stopped messing with anything system-related once I got everything stabilized weeks ago, and I was only using it lightly after that point (pretty much just web browsing and graphics apps). No new software installs or anything.

 

When I went to reinstall Catalina on top of the existing install to try and fix it, it said permission denied. So, I had to format the drive and install from scratch.

 

The good news is, this time around I didn't get the "bless" error once the install was finished. I'm really not sure why this time was different. So far, it seems to be more stable this time. For example, I didn't have to delete my power management plist to get sleep/wake working, and I'm noticing fewer quirks in the system overall. Previously, I think the bless error had really messed with permissions. This time, I'm encountering less issues related to that sort of problem. 

 

sorry to hear that... btw, have you tried the new VoodooI2C?

[agrafuese]

18 hours ago, golimpio said:

 

sorry to hear that... btw, have you tried the new VoodooI2C?

 

Ooooh.... not yet... any good? I just realized I am behind two versions!

[golimpio]

On 5/13/2020 at 12:38 PM, agrafuese said:

 

Ooooh.... not yet... any good? I just realized I am behind two versions!

 

I noticed that the double tap to drag is working now. Other than that, it seems as good as it was before for me.
 

Edited May 14, 2020 by golimpio
Changed from click to drag to double tap to drag

[agrafuese]

On 5/12/2020 at 11:10 PM, golimpio said:

 

I noticed that the double tap to drag is working now. Other than that, it seems as good as it was before for me.
 

That's interesting... I have been testing it over the past couple of days, and I haven't noticed anything different. I'm not able to do double tap to drag for some reason either (I don't use it anyway, but strange that it doesn't work for me).

[golimpio]

56 minutes ago, agrafuese said:

That's interesting... I have been testing it over the past couple of days, and I haven't noticed anything different. I'm not able to do double tap to drag for some reason either (I don't use it anyway, but strange that it doesn't work for me).

If you set to "three fingers drag", does it work?

I've attached a screenshot from my "System Preferences > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options..." (but there is nothing out of the ordinary in there).

VoodooI2C 2.4.2
VoodooInput 1.0.5
VoodooPS2Controller 2.1.4
Lilu 1.4.4

[agrafuese]

Ah! That did it. Dragging was turned off in those settings. Oddly, there's a weird "wait time" after I drag something before it releases, even when my finger leaves the trackpad completely. I've never used this feature in the past, so I don't know if that is normal macOS functionality, or if the kext is acting a bit strangely. In any case, I'm glad it works for you now! Tap tap tap tap, drag drag drag drag!

 

Edit: I see you use drag lock, so you might not notice the "wait time" because you manually release. But yeah, auto release is slow.

Edited May 15, 2020 by agrafuese

[golimpio]

6 hours ago, agrafuese said:

Ah! That did it. Dragging was turned off in those settings. Oddly, there's a weird "wait time" after I drag something before it releases, even when my finger leaves the trackpad completely. I've never used this feature in the past, so I don't know if that is normal macOS functionality, or if the kext is acting a bit strangely. In any case, I'm glad it works for you now! Tap tap tap tap, drag drag drag drag!

 

Edit: I see you use drag lock, so you might not notice the "wait time" because you manually release. But yeah, auto release is slow.

You're right, I use the drag lock to avoid the delay. I'm not sure if the delay is normal, but I've always noticed it and just assumed that it was normal, I've never looked into it actually.

Anyway, this is a very particular use case, I'd guess that most of people don't use it and just stick to the normal trackpad operation. In my case, at first I found the "click" noise from the trackpad annoying, so I've started using the tap to drag and I just got addicted to it 

[agrafuese]

On 5/15/2020 at 9:42 PM, golimpio said:

You're right, I use the drag lock to avoid the delay. I'm not sure if the delay is normal, but I've always noticed it and just assumed that it was normal, I've never looked into it actually.

Anyway, this is a very particular use case, I'd guess that most of people don't use it and just stick to the normal trackpad operation. In my case, at first I found the "click" noise from the trackpad annoying, so I've started using the tap to drag and I just got addicted to it 

 

I agree, I do like the silent tapping part!

[phaberest]

Hi guys! Just a quick check to understand if something is wrong on my machine or is something someone has already experienced.

Since Mojave I started having my CPU jumping to 100%, especially when doing screen sharing or doing calls via either Google Meet or Whereby.

 

I tried formatting and upgrading to Catalina (and switched to a 4K compatible nvme on the occasion), but after repasting I only noticed an improvement in the temps, while the stress on the cpu looks to be behaving similarly.

[agrafuese]

12 hours ago, phaberest said:

Hi guys! Just a quick check to understand if something is wrong on my machine or is something someone has already experienced.

Since Mojave I started having my CPU jumping to 100%, especially when doing screen sharing or doing calls via either Google Meet or Whereby.

 

I tried formatting and upgrading to Catalina (and switched to a 4K compatible nvme on the occasion), but after repasting I only noticed an improvement in the temps, while the stress on the cpu looks to be behaving similarly.

 

I have the same build as you, but a different hard drive. I've had several Google Meet sessions and never noticed any performance issues at the time. I've never looked at the Activity Monitor app while running a meeting, so I don't know what my % values actually were, but right now I am sitting in an empty meeting alone as a test, and I am only seeing around 8% usage. I suspect that would go up with several other people in the meeting, but I don't think it would be extremely different. I've never done a screen share, however, so I can't evaluate on that.

 

A while back in this thread, user golimpio shared his Clover folder. If you haven't done so already, you might want to search for that post and try out his setup. It's essentially the same one I use as well. If you're still experiencing issues after that, I'm not really sure what else would be causing them.

[agrafuese]

Also, please let us know what BIOS version you have and what version of Clover as well. Those two things could make a difference, if neither have been updated in the last month or so, although I suspect you wouldn't even be able to run Catalina 10.15.4 at all if you didn't have them at least somewhat current. But anything is possible, I suppose.

[golimpio]

16 hours ago, phaberest said:

Hi guys! Just a quick check to understand if something is wrong on my machine or is something someone has already experienced.

Since Mojave I started having my CPU jumping to 100%, especially when doing screen sharing or doing calls via either Google Meet or Whereby.

 

I tried formatting and upgrading to Catalina (and switched to a 4K compatible nvme on the occasion), but after repasting I only noticed an improvement in the temps, while the stress on the cpu looks to be behaving similarly.

I don't use video conference / screen sharing apps, but I've noticed that most applications that make use of the GPU will cause similar issue.

I usually turn off the GPU-accelerated support if the software allows it, but then, normal stuff like watching a video on Youtube will make the fans go crazy in just a few seconds.

I used to edit photos in this laptop without any issue, I usually use Lightroom for this, and nowadays I have to turn off the GPU option to be able to use it. Performance is not as good as it used to be, it's less than OK. But because I've upgraded Lightroom so many times over the years, it's really hard to tell if the performance is worst because I've turned off GPU-acceleration or just because the software became heavier (which is expected).

Even terminal emulators nowadays make use of the GPU. I use iTerm2, which allows me to turn off GPU rendering, but I also use Alacritty, which is, as they describe a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator.

@agrafuese Haven't you noticed anything unusual with the fans when you watch a video on Youtube in the Chrome web browser?

[golimpio]

Just some notes about GPU/CPU use in Chrome vs Safari.

It seems that Safari handles it more efficiently than Chrome in my laptop. CPU utilization when watching Youtube videos in Safari is below 20% (usually close to 10%) for the browser + ~10-20% for WindowServer process 

In Chrome, there are 2 processes that will run over 30%: Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) and Google Chrome Helper (GPU). Usually the "Renderer" process will go over 40% for Youtube.

When watching something on Plex in Chrome, the GPU process will use 30~40% of CPU, while the Renderer process will increase to 90~100%.

In Safari, Plex won't use that much CPU and will run similar to Youtube (CPU: 15-25%).

My guess is that Chrome makes a lot more use of the GPU than Safari, or perhaps, it's just the fact that Safari is more efficient, but it's hard to tell without debugging it.

[hitman478]

Do you know, if there is any new progress about the Thunderbol 3 on the XPS 9550? My Thunderbolt Device is only recognized at boot and adter a Sleep it doesn't work anymore. I tried also the IOElectrify Kext but that didn't work for me. Sorry if this has maybe asked again before.

[agrafuese]

22 hours ago, golimpio said:

@agrafuese Haven't you noticed anything unusual with the fans when you watch a video on Youtube in the Chrome web browser?

 

I've never/rarely heard anything unusually loud or sudden in macOS... Windows is another story, haha. So, unless you suspect something is abnormal, I think it's just the way this laptop is.

 

For example, I just let a youtube video play and it took about 10 minutes before I heard even a light fan sound. And this is in Chrome. My CPU % values for Chrome are around 23-26% for the Renderer process and around 17-19% for the GPU process.

 

Chrome for Windows throws the fans on for most websites (especially ones with lots of sidebar ads), and the GT630M GPU makes the fans blast like jet engines when you play even the simplest games - and almost immediately. What I hear in macOS is a silent whisper by comparison

[golimpio]

Just updated to 10.15.5, and I have no issues while updating it.

It's too early to say if something has broken, but so far, it seems that nothing has changed.

I can't see the new battery health button. Probably it's not available for hackintoshes or it might be related to the model set on config.plist

Note: The last BIOS update is installed // Clover is the latest one available: r5118 // Kexts are updated to the latest as well.

 

[agrafuese]

Nice man! I haven't been keeping up on Mac news lately, but I had a feeling this morning that Apple was going to drop an update for Catalina soon  I'll probably give it another few days before I get bored enough to update it, haha. Keep us posted if you notice anything strange. It's probably good that the battery health button doesn't work, I don't want to know what mine would say (Catalina already tells me that I need to replace my battery soon, bah!).

 

[golimpio]

I've attached my latest EFI folder here, in case anyone is having issues to install Catalina and want to compare the EFI files.

Clover: r5118 / BIOS: Latest (1.13.1)
i7 // PM951 NVMe SAMSUNG 512GB // 16GB RAM // 4K

 

@Mr.C
 

EFI.zip

[phaberest]

On 5/26/2020 at 3:47 AM, agrafuese said:

Also, please let us know what BIOS version you have and what version of Clover as well. Those two things could make a difference, if neither have been updated in the last month or so, although I suspect you wouldn't even be able to run Catalina 10.15.4 at all if you didn't have them at least somewhat current. But anything is possible, I suppose.

Thank you agrafuese, I'll definitely double check golimpio's efi! Everything is up to date, latest BIOS (1.13.1), latest Clover (r5118) even tho I didn't check all the kext to be the latest, I just downloaded them from the repo

 

On 5/26/2020 at 8:56 AM, golimpio said:

Just some notes about GPU/CPU use in Chrome vs Safari.

It seems that Safari handles it more efficiently than Chrome in my laptop. CPU utilization when watching Youtube videos in Safari is below 20% (usually close to 10%) for the browser + ~10-20% for WindowServer process 

In Chrome, there are 2 processes that will run over 30%: Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) and Google Chrome Helper (GPU). Usually the "Renderer" process will go over 40% for Youtube.

When watching something on Plex in Chrome, the GPU process will use 30~40% of CPU, while the Renderer process will increase to 90~100%.

In Safari, Plex won't use that much CPU and will run similar to Youtube (CPU: 15-25%).

My guess is that Chrome makes a lot more use of the GPU than Safari, or perhaps, it's just the fact that Safari is more efficient, but it's hard to tell without debugging it.

Yeah, youtube is making some noise, but it's been better since I started using Vivaldi, Chrome is really gone too far in system usage :/

[Mr.C]

23 hours ago, golimpio said:

I've attached my latest EFI folder here, in case anyone is having issues to install Catalina and want to compare the EFI files.

Clover: r5118 / BIOS: Latest (1.13.1)
i7 // PM951 NVMe SAMSUNG 512GB // 16GB RAM // 4K

 

@Mr.C
 

EFI.zip

Thank you very much! I successfully installed Catalina 10.15.5

 

Some thing I need to fix after install:

 

- VerbStub audio didnt working yet. If I mount sytem in r/w I can install via the script and I can use the combo jack but after reboot the system dont show another output source (the windows appears when I plug in a jack)

- FireVault not working (needed to reinstall the system 3 times ), I found a possible fix [link] but I will manage it later

- Fans are constantly on even I dont do anything (not so annoying but noticeable)
 

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by Mr.C

[phaberest]

8 hours ago, Mr.C said:

Fans are constantly on even I dont do anything (not so annoying but noticeable)

What are your temps? Did you try to do a repaste recently?

[golimpio]

9 hours ago, Mr.C said:

- VerbStub audio didnt working yet. If I mount sytem in r/w I can install via the script and I can use the combo jack but after reboot the system dont show another output source (the windows appears when I plug in a jack)

 

I'm using ComboJack for the audio, it's not perfect, sometimes I have no sound on the headphone. I'm using a script from:
- https://github.com/hackintosh-stuff/ComboJack

It installs it to "/usr/local/bin", so you don't have to mount the system in r/w.

When I have no sound, I usually kill the ComboJack process (sometimes I have to do it a few times before it works again):

sudo killall ComboJack

When it doesn't work, I just put the laptop to sleep and when it wakes up, the audio is back to normal.

I haven't tried FileVault yet, but it's good to know that it can work on this laptop.