PurgeWrangler

macOS 10.13.4 broke fairly stable support for external graphics on Thunderbolt 1 & 2 macs. This script overrides that block and re-enables Apple-supported eGPUs on older TB ports without feature compromise.

Requirements

This script requires the following specifications:

• Mac with Thunderbolt 1/2
• macOS 10.13.4 or later
• System Backup (recommended)

Download the latest version of the script here.

NVIDIA eGPUs will require more patching, but a temporary workaround is available here.

For macs with discrete NVIDIA GPUs, you need to disable the dGPU and then run this script. You can disable it here. Note that you do not need this if you are setting up an NVIDIA eGPU.

For compatibility with older AMD cards, use @goalque's new automate-eGPU.kext for 10.13.4.

Usage

Please follow these steps:

Step 1

Disable system integrity protection using macOS from Terminal after booting into Recovery (CMD + R on power on):

$ csrutil disable
$ reboot

Step 2

Once back into macOS, run the following commands in Terminal:

$ cd /path/to/script/
# So if it's in the Downloads folder, you would do: cd ~/Downloads
$ sudo chmod +x purge-wrangler.sh
$ sudo ./purge-wrangler.sh

 
After rebooting, eGPUs should function "normally".

To uninstall the script:

$ sudo ./purge-wrangler.sh uninstall

Troubleshooting

If you are unable to boot into macOS, boot while pressing CMD + S, then execute the following commands:

$ mount -uw /
$ cd /path/to/script/
$ ./purge-wrangler.sh recover

 
On select computers in rare cases, prolonged sleep with eGPU attached may sometimes crash the computer. This is likely a macOS bug, and might be resolved if the kernel cache is automatically rebuilt. Ideally, this step will not be needed for most setups. To rebuild the kernel cache automatically, run the following in Terminal:

$ sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/
$ sudo reboot

References

Many thanks to @itsage, @fricorico, @goalque, and many others here for the insightful discussion that led me to the fix.

Incredible job! Just went through the bash script and saw the wonderful job you did making it as easy as possible on patching and uninstalling if anything goes wrong!

Keep up the good work 👏

Posted by: tiagoamaro

Incredible job! Just went through the bash script and saw the wonderful job you did making it as easy as possible on patching and uninstalling if anything goes wrong!

Keep up the good work 👏

Thank you good sir! 🙂

You Sir are a legend!

Posted by: Jeroenvankeulen

You Sir are a legend!

Did you try it? Any hiccups?

Nice job dude! Glad we could figure this out so quickly and provide a working solution for all TB2 users out there. I will also try using the script tonight and let you know the outcome.

Posted by: FricoRico

Nice job dude! Glad we could figure this out so quickly and provide a working solution for all TB2 users out there. I will also try using the script tonight and let you know the outcome.

Thank you for that hint in our private discussion. Was an eye-opener of sorts. 🙌

Patch works successfully on macOS 10.13.5 Beta 1 as well.

OMG! Will this work with hot plug feature too? I'm looking forward to try it in a few hours. Great work. Thank you!

Posted by: rmvz3

OMG! Will this work with hot plug feature too? I'm looking forward to try it in a few hours. Great work. Thank you!

Native eGPU support as if its a TB3 mac. Should not be a problem as far as I can tell in my tests. Macs with NVIDIA dGPUs still require my other patch to get things going.

Nice, impatient to test it next week when I will come back from vacation 🙂

good job !

👍
Haven't tested yet (will do so as soon as I have time to upgrade, plus time to restore from backup if needed) but have read the script, looks solid enough.

I can't unsee "IoT BS witch type" tho 😉

@mac_editor
Although the enabler for .4 isn't finished yet, I can say that I will add your script to mine as well (if needed, still fixing the panics) once it's in the final release for .4
in the meantime would you like to test my thunderbolt recognition script:

bash <(curl -s  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/learex/macOS-eGPU/macOS10134/ScriptTB.sh) 

if someone does not get the correct answer or even that it could not be detected please say...

I can confirm your script works on Mac Mini (late 2014) with RX 580. Great work!

I have a feeling that Apple kept Intel happy, and left a backdoor for us. If they deliberately wanted to block older TB technology, there are more effective ways to accomplish that in the EFI level.

Posted by: mac_editor Native eGPU support as if its a TB3 mac. Should not be a problem as far as I can tell in my tests. Macs with NVIDIA dGPUs still require my other patch to get things going.

I'm gonna try right now. I have a Nvidia 650M dGPU and I'm using a GTX1070 eGPU (Akitio Thunder2) on my TB1 MacBookPro. What patch do you say I need to install? Do you mean the nvidia-egpu.v7 from here?

So what's the proper order to enable a Nvidia dGPU Mac with TB1/2 from scratch? Would this be correct?

1- Install Nvidia drivers (SIP enabled)
2- Install NVIDIAEGPUSupport (SIP enabled without Kext)
3- Install PureWrangler (SIP disabled)

EDIT: This is a bit offtopic but I've noticed I no longer have to use DIYeGPU 1.35 to boot with my eGPU on Bootcamp since now I can plug the egpu, turn on the mac and choose Windows without having to do the double boot dance. Before this, if I tried to boot with the egpu plugged in, the mac freezed. I needed to plug the egpu cable just after the chime and do the double boot using the DIYeGPU boot partition.

@rmvz3, Nvidia cards are still not working with 10.13.4, unfortunately.

Posted by: devild

@rmvz3, Nvidia cards are still not working with 10.13.4, unfortunately.

Ouch! 🙁

Wonderful, many thanks I'll test it on my MacPro 2013 + Vega soon!

Posted by: rmvz3

Posted by: devild

@rmvz3, Nvidia cards are still not working with 10.13.4, unfortunately.

Ouch! 🙁

I'm sorry that it takes so long,
I only have a few hours a day where I can test and tweak.
And still some research needs to be done before a closed beta can be published and then on the following day if all goes well then to the public.
atm, the drivers cause the problem not the wrangler (as far as I can tell for now)

Everything works fine (including hotplug) with my 2014 mbp13 + Akitio node + RX 580 ~

@kyorosweb, thank you for your report! I have a similar configuration (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)) and I was wondering if a RX 570/RX 580 would be natively compatible. Cheers!

If anyone had some success with a TB2 machine and Nvidia eGPU's,  please provide a comprehensive A to Z tutorial. 
Best Regards

PS: "Macs with NVIDIA dGPUs still require my other patch to get things going." mac_editor, what is this "Other patch"?

Thank you @mac_editor! Great effort by all to show defiance as a community.

@tiagoamaro RX 470/570 should work. They share PCI ID with RX 480/580.

@rhenriques11 Check out @mac_editor's Purge-NVDA to disable Nvidia dGPU so that it doesn't clash with AMD eGPU. Once you've done that, run PurgeWrangler script to unblock eGPU for TB1/2 Macs.

@rhenriques11
important is here the dGPU not eGPU.
The purge-NVIDIA script is meant. A link can be found in his signature

EDIT: @itsage you were faster, dang it.

Posted by: tiagoamaro

@kyorosweb, thank you for your report! I have a similar configuration (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)) and I was wondering if a RX 570/RX 580 would be natively compatible. Cheers!

However, there still some performance drops in some apps like photoshop & sketch. You will feel some lag on drawing, but I this it is a software problem as it has no lag on non-retaina mode (I am using a 4k monitor) and this issue also happened in nvidia cards. All native app are running fine.
But when I connect the monitor directly to 2017 mbp has no any graphic problem. So it may also cause by the speed bottleneck of  TB2. Or I can try to connect the egpu with my 2017 mbp.

Posted by: fr34k I'm sorry that it takes so long,
I only have a few hours a day where I can test and tweak.
And still some research needs to be done before a closed beta can be published and then on the following day if all goes well then to the public.
atm, the drivers cause the problem not the wrangler (as far as I can tell for now)

Please, don't apologize for that. We are all extremely grateful for your job. You guys are awesome.

Thank you so much guys. I'll test tonight. I do not have a Nvidia dGPU, only eGPU. Let's see if it works. 
I have already upgraded both CUDA an Nvidia Web Driver to the latest versions. Is it necessary to use an upgraded nvidia-egpu-v7.zip (this is always necessary to make things work) from this post "https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/wip-nvidia-egpu-support-for-high-sierra/"
This has been always a sensitive script to use and it seems that it needs to be tuned for every new driver. If so anyone has it handy for 387.10.10.10.30.103 and MacOS 10.13.4?
Cheers

PS - My setups are: - MBP 2015 with internal AMD Radeon R9 M370X; Aktio Box with Nvidia GF 1080Ti
 - Mac Pro mid 2013 TrashCan with 2 internal AMD Fire pro 500; Two eGPU - Aktio Box with Nvidia GF 1080Ti and Sonnet Box also with a Nvidia GF 1080Ti.

Works great on MBP 13 Late 2013, MSI RX480. macOS is able to auto detect GPU as Radeon RX 480 8192 MB, which in previous versions was always a Radeon R9.

Also, not sure if it's just me, but CSGO frames rates seems higher, perhaps better driver support for RX480 this time around. 

Next, I will be monitoring if the random egpu sleep/wake crashes that were happening on 10.13.3 is resolved in this version.

Has anyone tried with tb1 Mac? Haven’t heard of a success yet and can’t test on my end.

I‘m so glad that you found a solution. I started to gather all I need for my eGPU Setup for my 2015 MBP (got an Omen extreeeeemly cheap) 

Regarding GPU‘s: With this Script I will also have no trouble to get a RX460 run, correct? 

Just needed to run three displays.

Posted by: fr34k

@mac_editor
Although the enabler for .4 isn't finished yet, I can say that I will add your script to mine as well (if needed, still fixing the panics) once it's in the final release for .4
in the meantime would you like to test my thunderbolt recognition script:

 

bash <(curl -s  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/learex/macOS-eGPU/macOS10134/ScriptTB.sh) 

 

if someone does not get the correct answer or even that it could not be detected please say...

 

Looks fine to me at a glance, need to test though. Would love to integrate into purge-wrangler.sh.

Posted by: mac_editor

Has anyone tried with tb1 Mac? Haven’t heard of a success yet and can’t test on my end.

I will try tonight with a 2011 17" MBP [TB1]. It was successful with kext swap so I bet your script will work.

@thefurious RX 460/560 is a bit of a wild card. While there are drivers and support, I've seen issues with external monitor output. I will test using Breakaway Puck 560 and provide an update.

Posted by: mac_editor

Posted by: fr34k

@mac_editor
Although the enabler for .4 isn't finished yet, I can say that I will add your script to mine as well (if needed, still fixing the panics) once it's in the final release for .4
in the meantime would you like to test my thunderbolt recognition script:

 

bash <(curl -s  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/learex/macOS-eGPU/macOS10134/ScriptTB.sh) 

 

if someone does not get the correct answer or even that it could not be detected please say...

 

Looks fine to me at a glance, need to test though. Would love to integrate into purge-wrangler.sh.

That's what it's for...

@mac_editor let me buy you a beer! (give me your PayPal)

It runs like a charm!

Posted by: Jeroenvankeulen

@mac_editor let me buy you a beer! (give me your PayPal)

It runs like a charm!

Appreciate the sentiment and generosity! That's more than enough 😉