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VoodooRMI

Synaptic Trackpad driver over SMBus/I2C for macOS

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/learn @VoodooSMBus/VoodooRMI
About this skill

Quality Score

0/100

Supported Platforms

Universal

README

VoodooRMI

Gitter

A port for macOS of Synaptic's RMI Trackpad driver from Linux. This works for both I2C HID trackpads from Synaptic as well as Synaptic's SMBus trackpads. When following the instructions below, make sure you only select I2C or SMBus depending on your trackpad's capabilities.

Supported Features

  • Force Touch emulation
  • 3 and 4 finger gestures
  • Trackpoint over PS2 Passthrough
  • SMBus or I2C communication

Compatibility

Synaptic trackpads generally work over SMBus or I2C, though not both. Pay close attention to which bus it works over.

SMBus

macOS (Requires Acidanthera's VoodooPS2 version 2.3.6 or above):

  • Look in IORegistryExplorer under ApplePS2SynapticsTrackpad, and look for the value Intertouch Support=True
  • Look for "VoodooPS2Trackpad: Trackpad supports SMBus operation" within macOS logs (may need to use sudo dmesg to see this)

Windows:

  • Check under Device Manager for a Synaptics SMBus device

Linux:

  • If you are using intertouch (i.e. psmouse.intertouch=1) for your synaptics trackpad, then it's compatible
  • Get i2c-tools from your package manager. Run i2cdetect -l, and note the number for SMBus (It's usually zero). Run i2cdetect # where # is the number you got from running the prior command. Synaptic devices are always at address 0x2c, so check at that address for anything other than --. It will usually appear as UU in my experiance if it's a Synaptics device.
    • If the trackpad does not show up, there is a chance that it will still work. There have been one or two examples of the trackpad not showing up but still being compatible.
  • Likely compatible if you run dmesg and find a message along the lines of "Your touchpad x says it can support a different bus." and it's a Synaptics trackpad.

I2C

macOS:

  • If you already have VoodooI2CHID installed, check folllowing values in IORegistry
    • VoodooI2CHIDDevice has HIDDescriptor containing VendorID 0x6cb, or
    • Parent device of VoodooI2CHIDDevice has name containing SYN or SYNA

Windows:

  • Check for HID-compliant touch pad in device manager
    • In properties, verify General - location is on I2C HID Device and Details - Hardware Ids contains VID_06CB (or SYN, SYNA)

Linux:

  • Check for the presence of i2c-SYN in dmesg.
  • Get i2c-tools from your package manager, and use the i2cdetect tool to see if there are any devices at address 0x2c for any bus that isn't SMBus. If you see it under SMBus, I'd use SMBus as the trackpad seemingly operates better under SMBus!

Requirements

SMBus

I2C

  • VoodooI2C 2.5 or newer is required
    • Follow their Documentation to identify if you need GPIO pinning.
    • Polling mode should just work
  • If your device's ACPI name is not included below or marked as unknown, you may add it yourself and create a PR/issue

| Name | Main function | |---|---| | SYN1B7F | F12 | | SYNA0000 | F11 | | SYNA1202 | F12 | | SYNA2393 | unknown | | SYNA2B2C | F12 | | SYNA2B31 | F12 | | SYNA2B33 | F11 | | SYNA2B5A | F12 | | SYNA2B61 | F11 | | SYNA2B34 | unknown | | SYN3054 | F11 | | SYNA3083 | F12 | | SYNA3105 | unknown | | SYNA328B | F12 | | SYNA328E | F12 | | SYNA3602 | unknown | | SYNA7500 | unknown | | SYNA7501 | unknown | | SYNA7DAB | F12 | | SYNA7DB5 | F12 |

Installation

  1. Add the required kexts to your bootloader
  2. Make sure VoodooPS2 is configured as below:
    • Enabled:
      • VoodooPS2Controller.kext
      • VoodooPS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/VoodooPS2Mouse.kext
      • VoodooPS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/VoodooPS2Keyboard.kext
      • VoodooPS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/VoodooPS2Trackpad.kext
    • Disabled:
      • VoodooPS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/VoodooInput.kext
  3. For OpenCore users, make sure to add the below kexts in the order they're listed into your config.plist.
    • VoodooRMI.kext
    • VoodooRMI.kext/Contents/PlugIns/VoodooInput.kext
    • SMBus trackpads:
      • VoodooSMBus.kext
      • VoodooRMI.kext/Contents/PlugIns/RMISMBus.kext
    • I2C trackpads:
      • VoodooI2C.kext
      • VoodooRMI.kext/Contents/PlugIns/RMII2C.kext

There is no support for this kext being loaded into Library/Extensions or System/Library/Extensions. This likely won't break loading it, but test with injection first before sending in a bug report.

Configuration

The values below can be configured through either ioio or ACPI. An example SSDT can be found under the ACPI examples folder. Note that using non-integer value causes undefined behaviour which may prevent the kext from loading

| Value | Default | Description | | ----- | ------- | ----------- | | ForceTouchType | 1 | Controls how force touch emulation behaves. 0 = Disabled, 1 = Clickpad press with size threshold, 2 = size threshold only | | ForceTouchMinPressure | 90 | Minimum z value to trigger Force touch when clickpad is clicked | | DisableWhileTypingTimeout | 250 | Milliseconds after typing in which to reject trackpad packets | | DisableWhileTrackpointTimeout | 250 | Milliseconds after using the trackpoint in which to reject trackpad packets | | TrackpointMultiplier | 20 | Multiplier used on trackpoint inputs (other than scrolling). This is divided by 20, so the default value of 20 will not change the output value at all | | TrackpointScrollMultiplierX | 20 | Multiplier used on the x axis when middle button is held down for scrolling. This is divided by 20. | | TrackpointScrollMultiplierY | 20 | Same as the above, except applied to the Y axis | | TrackpointDeadzone | 1 | Minimum value at which trackpoint reports will be accepted. This is subtracted from the input of the trackpoint, so setting this extremely high will reduce trackpoint resolution | | MinYDiffThumbDetection | 200 | Minimum distance between the second lowest and lowest finger in which Minimum Y logic is used to detect the thumb rather than using the z value from the trackpad. Setting this higher means that the thumb must be farther from the other fingers before the y coordinate is used to detect the thumb, rather than using finger area. Keeping this smaller is preferable as finger area logic seems to only be useful when all 4 fingers are grouped together closely, where the thumb is more likely to be pressing down more | | PalmRejectionMaxObjWidth | 255 | Max contact width before contact is considered accidental. This value can be acquired by experimentation using Rehabman's ioio. | | PalmRejectionMaxObjHeight | 255 | Max contact height before contact is considered accidental. This value can be acquired by experimentation using Rehabman's ioio. | | PalmRejectionWidth | 10 | Percent (out of 100) width of trackpad which is used as a low confidence zone on the left and right side of the trackpad | | PalmRejectionWidth | 60 | Percent (out of 100) height of trackpad which is used as a low confidence zone on the left and right side of the trackpad (starting from the top) | | PalmRejectionTrackpointHeight | 20 | Percent (out of 100) height of trackpad which is used as a low confidence zone across the top of the trackpad |

Note that you can use Rehabman's ioio to set properties temporarily (until the next reboot).
ioio -s RMIBus ForceTouchType 0
ioio -s RMIBus PalmRejectionMaxObjWidth 5
ioio -s RMIBus PalmRejectionMaxObjHeight 6

Building

  1. git submodule update --init --recursive
  2. git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/acidanthera/MacKernelSDK
  3. Build within XCode using the play button in the top left
    • RMISMBus/RMII2C will automatically build when building VoodooRMI

Loading/Unloading

For loading, you may need to put RMII2C/RMISMBus's dependencies into the kextload command. Note that RMISMBus/RMII2C depend on VoodooRMI.

The below examples assume VoodooSMBus/VoodooI2C are in the same folder as VoodooRMI. If they are not, you will need to give the path to those kexts. When manually loading from within macOS, keep in mind that csrutil needs to be partially disabled to allow unsigned kexts, and the kexts need to be owned by Root.

Changing owner of kext

// Note that this changes the owner of every kext in the directory your in
sudo chown -R root:wheel *.kext

Manually loading kext

Example for SMBus:

cd path/to/unziped-VoodooRMI_Debug
sudo kextutil -vvvv -d VoodooRMI.kext -d VoodooSMBus.kext VoodooRMI.kext/Contents/PlugIns/RMISMBus.kext

Example for I2C:

sudo kextutil -vvvv -d VoodooRMI.kext -d VoodooI2C.kext VoodooRMI.kext/Contents/PlugIns/RMII2C.kext

For unloading, you can use the bundle ids. This should unload cleanly, though you may need to unload twice in a row to get it to cooperate.

sudo kextunload -vvvv -b com.1Revenger1.RMISMBus -b com.1Revenger1.VoodooRMI

Troubleshooting

Before creating an issue, please check the below:

  1. Make sure VoodooSMBus/VoodooI2C is loading and attaching
  2. Make sure VoodooInput and VoodooPS2Trackpad is loading
    • kextstat | grep Voodoo
  3. You may need to do IRQ patching on Haswell and older devices for SMBus trackpads
    • Required if the SBUS device does not have any IOInterruptControllers in IORegis

VoodooSMBus

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GitHub Stars259
CategoryDevelopment
Updated9d ago
Forks19
VoodooSMBus/VoodooRMI

Languages

C++

Security Score

100/100

Audited on Mar 25, 2026

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