Wi-Fi on T2 MacBooks

Intel T2 MacBooks (2018/2019/2020 MBP + MBA) ship with a Broadcom BCM4364 or BCM4377 chip that needs coaxing to associate reliably on Linux. The vinOS ISO includes every fix below by default — this page is here for people who are:

• Booting an older ISO that didn’t have the full recipe.
• Installing to disk and losing state during the migration.
• Diagnosing a partial regression.

If wifi just works on your first boot, skip this page.

The 8-item recipe

Every fix is baked into the shipped ISO. Together they get the BCM4364/4377 to associate on the first boot ~99% of the time.

1. wireless-regdb installed

$ pacman -Qi wireless-regdb | head -1
Name : wireless-regdb

If missing: sudo pacman -S wireless-regdb.

2. iwd Country set

$ cat /etc/iwd/main.conf
[General]
EnableNetworkConfiguration=true
Country=US

Match US to your ISO country code (GB, DE, JP, etc.).

3. systemd-networkd running with DHCP

$ cat /etc/systemd/network/25-wireless.network
[Match]
Name=wl*

[Network]
DHCP=yes
IgnoreCarrierLoss=3s

And enable: sudo systemctl enable --now systemd-networkd.

4. brcmfmac feature_disable set

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/brcmfmac.conf
options brcmfmac feature_disable=0x82000

This disables the Broadcom features that break on non-macOS drivers.

5. T2 initramfs modules included

$ cat /etc/mkinitcpio.conf | grep MODULES
MODULES=(applespi apple_ibridge apple_ib_tb apple_ib_als brcmfmac brcmutil)

Regenerate the initramfs if you changed anything: sudo mkinitcpio -P.

6. cfg80211 on the kernel command line

Check your bootloader config; the line should include:

cfg80211.ieee80211_regdom=US

Match the same country code as step 2.

7. Model-specific firmware symlinks

Different T2 model variants (MacBookPro15,1 vs 16,1 vs 16,4 etc.) expect slightly different firmware filenames. The apple-bcm-firmware package ships all of them; we symlink the right one at first boot.

$ ls -l /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 46 Jul 15 20:27
  /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.bin ->
  /lib/firmware/brcm/apple/brcmfmac4364b3-pcie.txt

If the symlink is missing, sudo vinos-first-run will recreate it based on your detected model.

8. iwd active

$ systemctl is-active iwd
active

If not: sudo systemctl enable --now iwd.

Verify the whole stack

The vinos-doctor wifi section walks every item above:

$ vinos-doctor
...
wifi (T2 Mac + generic)
  PASS wireless-regdb installed
  PASS iwd Country=US
  PASS systemd-networkd active
  PASS brcmfmac feature_disable=0x82000
  PASS T2 initramfs modules present
  PASS cfg80211 regdom on cmdline
  PASS BCM4364 firmware symlink resolved
  PASS iwd active
...

The red text on boot is normal

You’ll see brcmfmac: could not find firmware... red text scrolling past during boot. This is not an error. The Broadcom driver probes for several firmware filenames in sequence; the first few misses are noisy, then it finds the right one and associates. Watch for brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_txcap_blob (the success message) somewhere below the red text.

If you never see the success line, then it’s real — grab journalctl -k | grep brcmfmac and file an issue.

Still nothing?

• Reboot once cleanly (not a resume from suspend) — first-boot firmware detection sometimes needs a clean power cycle.
• Try sudo iwctl station wlan0 scan; sleep 3; sudo iwctl station wlan0 get-networks. If you see SSIDs, the hardware is fine and it’s an association issue.
• File an issue with vinos-doctor + journalctl -k -b attached.