Unleash the full potential of your SDXC UHS-I cards
An unofficial macOS kernel extension for Realtek PCIe-based SD card readers.
It uses the Linux driver as a reference implementation but is written from scratch and carefully designed for macOS to deliver the best performance.
- No compatibility layer
- Supports SDSC/HC/XC cards
- Supports the default and the high speed modes
- Supports UHS-I SDR12/25/50/104 and DDR50 modes
- Recognizable as a built-in card reader device
- Device-independent SD host driver stack
- MMC cards are not supported
- SD Express cards are not supported
- Last Updated: Jun 18, 2021
- Reference: Linux Kernel 5.11
- Driver Status: Pre-1.0 Beta
- Power management is not implemented.
- I/O performance and the overall driver stability are of the most concern at this moment.
- macOS Big Sur
- macOS Catalina
- Other systems are not tested yet.
| Series | PCI ID | Name | Supported | Since |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5209 | 0x10EC5209 | RTS5209 PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.1 |
| 5227 | 0x10EC5227 | RTS5227 PCI Express Card Reader | Not Yet | N/A |
| 5227 | 0x10EC522A | RTS522A PCI Express Card Reader | Not Yet | N/A |
| 5228 | 0x10EC5228 | RTS5228 PCI Express Card Reader | Not Yet | N/A |
| 5229 | 0x10EC5229 | RTS5229 PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.1 |
| 5249 | 0x10EC5249 | RTS5249 PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.0 |
| 5249 | 0x10EC524A | RTS524A PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.0 |
| 5249 | 0x10EC525A | RTS525A PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.0 |
| 5260 | 0x10EC5260 | RTS5260 PCI Express Card Reader | Not Yet | N/A |
| 5261 | 0x10EC5261 | RTS5261 PCI Express Card Reader | Not Yet | N/A |
| 8411 | 0x10EC5286 | RTL8402 PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.2 |
| 8411 | 0x10EC5287 | RTL8411B PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.2 |
| 8411 | 0x10EC5289 | RTL8411 PCI Express Card Reader | Yes | 0.9.2 |
- By design, all listed devices are supported, and devices that have the same series share most of the controller code.
- RTS525A has the highest priority than other chips, because that's the only chip available for me to test the driver.
- If a device's support status is "Not Yet", its controller is not implemented yet.
Please read FAQs carefully before asking any questions.
Please use the issue template before submitting any code-level issues.
Please clearly indicate your chip model, device ID and revision number and attach the kernel log in your issue.
You are welcome to submit pull requests to improve this driver.
Please read the code documentation to understand how each class/function is related to the Linux driver code and how to add support for other listed devices.
A detailed port note will be available later.
A discussion thread is available on InsanelyMac.
Writing a driver from scratch is hard and time consuming.
If you would like to support my work, please consider a donation.
- Acidanthera for MacKernelSDK
- Realtek for the Linux RTSX PCI driver
- FireWolf for developing the card reader driver for macOS
This project is licensed under BSD-3-Clause.
Copyright (C) 2021 FireWolf @ FireWolf Pl. All Rights Reserved.