Input driver for the SPI keyboard / trackpad found on 12" MacBooks (2015 and later) and newer MacBook Pros (late 2016 through mid 2018), as well a simple touchbar and ambient-light-sensor driver for late 2016 MacBook Pro's and later.

The keyboard / trackpad driver here is now included in the kernel as of v5.3.

NOTE:

The touchbar driver was refactored in late 2018; if you're upgrading from the appletb driver, please see the Upgrading section; if you're running a kernel before 4.16 then please check out the legacy branch instead.

Using it:

If you're on any MacBook or MacBook Pro other than MacBook8,1 (2015), and you're running a kernel before 4.11, then you'll need to boot the kernel with intremap=nosid. In all cases make sure you don't have noapic in your kernel options.

On the 2015 MacBook you need to (re)compile your kernel with CONFIG_X86_INTEL_LPSS=n if running a kernel before 4.14. And on all kernels you need ensure the spi_pxa2xx_platform and spi_pxa2xx_pci modules are loaded too (if you don't have those module, rebuild your kernel with CONFIG_SPI_PXA2XX=m and CONFIG_SPI_PXA2XX_PCI=m).

On all other MacBook's and MacBook Pros you need to instead make sure both the spi_pxa2xx_platform and intel_lpss_pci modules are loaded (if these don't exist, you need to (re)compile your kernel with CONFIG_SPI_PXA2XX=m and CONFIG_MFD_INTEL_LPSS_PCI=m).

For best results everywhere, make sure all three modules (this applespi driver plus the two core ones mentioned above) are present in your initramfs/initrd so that the keyboard is functional by the time the prompt for the disk password appears. Also, having them loaded early also appears to remove the need for the irqpoll kernel parameter on MacBook8,1's.

Lastly, please see the Keyboard/Touchpad/Touchbar section of my gist for recommended user-space configurations and more details.

DKMS module (Debian & co):

As root, do the following (all MacBook's and MacBook Pro's except MacBook8,1 (2015)):

echo -e "\n# applespi\napplespi\nspi_pxa2xx_platform\nintel_lpss_pci" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

apt install dkms
git clone https://github.com/roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver.git /usr/src/applespi-0.1
dkms install -m applespi -v 0.1

If you're on a MacBook8,1 (2015):

echo -e "\n# applespi\napplespi\nspi_pxa2xx_platform\nspi_pxa2xx_pci" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

apt install dkms
git clone https://github.com/roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver.git /usr/src/applespi-0.1
dkms install -m applespi -v 0.1

Akmods module (RPM Fusion / Red Hat & co):

You can build the akmod package from this repository:

https://pagure.io/fedora-macbook12-spi-driver-kmod

Or use this copr repository:

$ dnf copr enable meeuw/macbook12-spi-driver-kmod

$ dnf install macbook12-spi-driver-kmod

What doesn't work:

• Autodetection of ISO layout
• Resume on MacBook8,1

Debugging:

Packet tracing is exposed via the kernel tracepoints framework. Tracing of individual packet types can be enabled with something like the following:

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/applespi/applespi_keyboard_data/enable

The packets are then visible in /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace

Trackpad dimensions logging can be enabled with

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/kernel/debug/applespi/enable_tp_dim

and then viewed with something like

sudo watch /sys/kernel/debug/applespi/tp_dim

Touchbar/ALS/iBridge:

The touchbar and ambient-light-sensor (ALS) are part of the iBridge chip, and hence there are 3 modules corresponding to these (apple_ibridge, apple_ib_tb, and apple_ib_als). Generally loading any one of these will load the others, unless you are loading them via insmod. If loading manually (i.e. via insmod), you need to first load the industrialio_triggered_buffer module.

The touchbar driver provides basic touchbar functionality (enabling the touchbar and switching between modes based on the FN key). The touchbar is automatically dimmed and later switched off if no (internal) keyboard, touchpad, or touchbar input is received for a period of time; any (internal) keyboard, touchpad, or touchbar input switches it back on. The timeouts till the touchbar is dimmed and turned off can be changed via the idle_timeout and dim_timeout module params or sysfs attributes (/sys/class/input/input9/device/...); they default to 5 min and 4.5 min, respectively. See also modinfo apple_ib_tb.

The ALS driver exposes the ambient light sensor; if you have the iio-sensor-proxy installed then it should be recognized and handled automatically.

Upgrading:

The touchbar and ALS drivers used to be in a single module, appletb. This has now been split up into 3 modules, apple_ibridge, apple_ib_tb, and apple_ib_als. Generally whereever you were using appletb (e.g. in the initrd/dracut/whatever configs) you want to use apple_ib_tb now. Also, make sure to remove the old appletb module, either by first doing a sudo dkms remove applespi/0.1 --all before upgrading, or by manually removing the driver (e.g. sudo find /lib/modules/ -name appletb.ko | xargs rm).

Some useful threads:

• https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108331
• https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891
• https://gist.github.com/almas/5f75adb61bccf604b6572f763ce63e3e (Ubuntu LTS on MacBook Pro 2017 (A1707, MBP 14,3))