1. I installed rEFInd to have Ubuntu on an external drive, but no luck. Now I have decided to completely remove rEFInd from my Macbook Pro. I removed the folder /efi/, but the boot manager keeps appearing. How can I completely remove rEFInd from my Mac?
2. Note: 1) Better install rEFInd on EFI partition, since around 200 MB of unused disk space is sitting idle there. Also use “ bootx64.efi ” file, which makes things a lot easier for Mac machine’s Startup Manager. 2) For Windows or Linux installation, check rEFInd installation document page. 3) Copy a desired.icns file from “ EFI - boot.
3. REFInd is a fork of the rEFIt boot manager.

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You installed Windows on an Intel Mac via Boot Camp, and want to usevirtualization in it. But there’s an issue — hardware virtualization extensionsare not available. Luckily, this can be worked around easily with the help ofrEFInd, an alternate boot manager.

Using rEFInd you can select the appropriate OS and it should boot cleanly on your hardware. In the event that rEFInd gets clobbered (you'll know, because a power-cycle takes you to the built-in macOS boot manager) you should still be able to boot into Windows, but you'll probably lose the ability to boot into Linux.

Many software development workflows involve virtualization. WSL, Docker forWindows, and the Android Emulator are some examples of commonvirtualization-based tools. Then there are general virtualizationtools/hypervisors, such as VMware Workstation, Hyper-V or VirtualBox. All thesetools require hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT-x, AMD-V) or atleast are very slow without them. Virtualization extensions are not enabled bydefault in the CPU, they must be enabled by something. On typical PCs, this isoften a firmware-level setting (that might be disabled by default), or it mightbe unconditionally enabled by the firmware. On a Mac, however, enabling VT-x isdone by macOS, as part of the boot process. This means that Windows running inBoot Camp will start without virtualization, unless you want to boot into macOSfirst and then reboot into Windows. That setup isn’t quite ergonomic (and whatif macOS refuses to shut down, as it often does for me?).

Instead, we’re going to userEFInd, a boot manager forEFI-based systems that can boot into various OSes and also handle otherparts of the boot process. But first, let’s prepare our system for this.

DISCLAIMER: Those steps may make your Mac fail to boot. I don’t take anyresponsibility whatsoever if that happens. Prepare for the worst — makebackups, perhaps have install media ready, plan some downtime.

Step 1. Install Windows in Boot Camp the usual way¶

The first thing you should do is install Windows 10 in Boot Camp, withthe help of the Boot Camp Assistant. The Assistant will take some timeto partition your drive and do other preparations (and show barelyinformative progress bars, but I ranted about that Apple design “feature”already).There are no special preparations for this, the standard process willwork. If you already have Windows installed, you can go to the nextstep.

Step 2. Ensure the setup is stable¶

We’ll be making changes to how the machine boots, and as such, it’sgood to have other things working correctly and in line with yourexpected configuration. Make sure that:

• Both macOS and Windows boot correctly

• You can change the OS you boot into by holding the Option key afterpressing Power (requires disabling the firmware password 1)

• Disk encryption (FileVault, BitLocker) is enabled (if you want that, ofcourse) and fully configured (initial encryption is complete)

• Windows setup (including Boot Camp drivers) is complete

• The OSXRESERVED partition that the Boot Camp Assistant createdhas been deleted (that should have happened when booting into macOS for thefirst time after installing Windows — complete with a slowly movingprogress bar and no other information, as is usual for this OS — butif that didn’t happen, use Disk Utility in macOS or Recovery OS to dothat — pick your drive, click Partition and delete the partition,this will grow the macOS partition)

• System Integrity Protection is enabled (the procedure is a bit saferthat way)

Step 3. Create a partition for rEFInd¶

First, back up your data before making changes to your hard drivelayout. We’ll need to create a new partition for rEFInd to live on. Thisis the safest option — you could install it to the EFI System Partition (ESP),but macOS might want to put its own stuff there, and it’s safer not touse it.

The rEFInd partition doesn’t need to be large (50 MB will be enough); it must use the HFS+ (Mac OSExtended) file system. To create it, you have three options:

• From macOS, by shrinking the macOS partition: open Disk Utility,choose your drive, select Partition, add a new partition, set itssize and file system (in that order!). This will take a few minutes(10-15, or possibly more), and you won’t be able to use your Macduring the resize.

• From Recovery OS, by shrinking the macOS partition: same steps apply,but it might be a bit safer than doing it from within macOS.

• From Windows, by shrinking the Windows partition: open DiskManagement (press the Windows key and type partition, or openComputer Management from Administrative Tools), right click yourWindows partition, select Shrink Volume. Enter the desired size andclick Shrink. Then, right click the unallocated space and create aNew Simple Volume. For now, choose FAT32 or exFAT; you’ll need toreformat it as HFS+ from within macOS later (Erase in Disk Utility). Thiswill take a few seconds — and even if you include the time to reboot, it’sfaster.

After you create the new partition and make sure it’s HFS+ (Mac OSExtended), you can proceed with the setup. Also, if you don’t want thepartition to be visible in the Finder, run the following command (insertthe correct volume path for your system):

Step 4. Configure and install rEFInd¶

To set ue rEFInd, you’ll need to boot into macOS. DownloadrEFInd from theauthor’s website — you want the file named A binary zip file. Extractthis archive anywhere on your system (~/Downloads is fine).

First, you’ll need to change the configuration filerefind/refind.conf-sample. Locate the setting namedenable_and_lock_vmx, uncomment it (remove the # at the startof the line), and set its value to true. You can also make otherconfiguration changes — the default timeout of 20 seconds islikely to be too much for your needs.

When your configuration file is ready, you can install rEFInd. You canuse the refind-install tool, or perform a manual install (checkout the installationdocs for moredetails).

Before installing, you’ll need to get the device name of your rEFIndpartition. Open Disk Utility, select the partition from the left pane,and check the Device field (for example, disk9s9 — it will bedifferent on your system, depending on your partition layout).

Open a Terminal, cd into the directory where rEFInd was extracted,and run the following command (replace disk9s9 with the devicename on your system):

This command will produce an error if you have SIP enabled — but thiserror is not important for us, the install will work without the changethat SIP prevented. 2

You can now shut down your Mac and use the Option key while starting upto choose the OS. You should see three options: Macintosh HD, EFI Boot,and Boot Camp. The EFI Boot option is rEFInd — pick that, boot intoWindows (Microsoft EFI boot), et voilà — Windows can now run virtualization software.

There are a few more things that you can do now, depending on your OSpreferences.

• You can make rEFInd the default boot loader. Hold Control on theApple boot device selection screen and click the Power icon under theEFI Boot drive (source for thetip).

• You can use rEFInd to boot into macOS, although this might not workwith Big Sur according to the author (it seems to work for me, butYMMV). You can use the standard boot method for macOS (by defaultingto Macintosh HD, or by choosing it from the Power+Option picker) andrEFInd exclusively for Windows (and set your timeout to a low value).

• You can modify rEFInd’s configuration — in this scenario, the configfile is /Volumes/rEFInd/System/Library/CoreServices/refind.conf.You can set a custom background image, for example (rEFInd’ssite can help you figure outwhat options are available and what you can set them to).

Refind Boot Manager Themes

If the firmware password is important to you, you can restore it afterthe setup is done — this will mean using rEFInd to boot both Windows andmacOS, although I decided to remove the firmware password and bootinto macOS from the Power+Option boot menu.

The failing operation is marking the rEFInd partition bootable in the Macsense, using the bless command. However, the drive is consideredbootable as an EFI-compliant boot volume (it has *.efi files in specificplaces), and this is the boot method we’re using here. SIP aside, thebless utility is a bit buggy, and we can use rEFInd without a blessedpartition just fine.

So I’ve installed Ubuntu on the metal of my MacBook Pro Retina (13 inch, ifyou must know) and in order to dual-boot the machine, I use the rEFInd BootManager.

How To Use Refind Boot Manager

It works really well and was simple to configure, but I found that afterupgrading to Yosemite (10.10), Mac OS X became the default boot OS, whereasrEFInd was booting by default originally.

Originally, this was fine, I dealt with just holding the Option key downduring boot to bring up the Startup Manager and selecting EFI Boot inorder to get into Linux. I wasn’t restarting the computer that much anyway.But like most things, eventually, it irked me enough that I set out to fix it.

Normally, in OS X, to change the boot drive, you’d use System Preferences andchange your Startup Disk but in this case, you won’t see your EFI partitionavailable to be selected. Likewise, even if you go ahead and follow rEFInd’smethod for mounting the EFI partition, you’ll find that it’s not selectable asa Startup Disk. Or, even if you can, selecting it and restarting makes no difference.

So, what’s a guy to do? Turns out you can hold the Control key downprior to clicking onto a volume/device in the Startup Manager to set thatvolume as the boot default! So, I held down Control, clicked EFI Bootand that’s that.

This worked for me on my 2011-era Mac, now running OS X 10.10, but since thisoption isn’t officially documented anywhere that I can see, it could go awayat any time. Try it and add a comment below with your results.

Thanks to Macworld for the solution!

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As a side note, it’s interesting to see the UI for Mac OS has barely changedin decades for selecting a Startup Disk.

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