Realtek Card Reader Driver for macOS

Unleash the full potential of your SDXC UHS-I cards

Introduction

An unofficial macOS kernel extension for Realtek PCIe/USB-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.

Features

• 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

Notes:

• RealtekCardReaderFriend is required to enable this feature as of v0.9.5.

Limitations

• MMC cards are not supported
• SD Express cards are not supported

Current Status

• Last Updated: Dec 27, 2021
• Reference: Linux Kernel 5.11
• Driver Status: Pre-1.0 Beta (v0.9.6)
  • USB-based RTS5129, 5139 and 5179 card readers are now supported and should be working properly.
  • I/O performance and the overall driver stability are of the most concern at this moment.
• Known Issues: Link

Supported Systems

• macOS Monterey
• macOS Big Sur
• macOS Catalina
• macOS Mojave

Notes:

• Other systems are not tested yet.

Supported Devices

Series	Device ID	Name	Supported	Since	Status
51X9	0x0BDA0129	RTS5129 USB 2.0/3.0 Card Reader	Yes	0.9.5
51X9	0x0BDA0139	RTS5139 USB 2.0/3.0 Card Reader	Yes	0.9.5
51X9	0x0BDA0140	RTS5179 USB 2.0/3.0 Card Reader	Yes	0.9.5
5209	0x10EC5209	RTS5209 PCI Express Card Reader	Yes	0.9.1
5227	0x10EC5227	RTS5227 PCI Express Card Reader	Yes	0.9.3
5227	0x10EC522A	RTS522A PCI Express Card Reader	Yes	0.9.3
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	Yes	0.9.6
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

Notes:

• 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.
• Other Realtek USB card readers (e.g., RTS5138) conform to the USB Attached SCSI (UAS) protocol and therefore may be supported by the native driver.

Downloads

• Stable Releases (Recommended)
• Nightly Builds (Artifacts under each workflow run)

Boot Arguments

Please refer to this dedicated page to see all boot arguments.

Questions, Issues and Documentation

Users

Please read FAQs and Known Issues 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.
Please make sure that your kernel log is complete. Issues without any details will be closed and left unanswered.

Developers

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.

Discussion

A discussion thread is available on InsanelyMac.

Support

Writing a driver from scratch is hard and time consuming.
If you would like to support my work, please consider a donation.

References

• SD Physical Layer Simplified Specification

Credits

• Acidanthera for MacKernelSDK
• Realtek for the Linux RTSX PCI/USB driver
• FireWolf for developing the card reader driver for macOS

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the following beta testers without whom support for USB-based card readers won't be available.

• m0d16l14n1 for testing unstable, experimental builds to capture and fix a large number of issues.
• Sherlocks for testing early builds to debug the timeout issues.
• whatnameisit for testing early builds to debug the hardware initialization issues.
• gnpaone for providing multiple comprehensive bug reports.

License

This project is licensed under BSD-3-Clause.
Copyright (C) 2021 FireWolf @ FireWolf Pl. All Rights Reserved.