ben-z/free-sidecar

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1559 stars · 95 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A macOS GUI application that unlocks Apple's Sidecar feature on unsupported iPads and Macs by patching the SidecarCore framework blacklist. It provides a simple interface for editing the binary blacklist file without needing root access.

Use cases

• enable Sidecar on an older iPad running iPadOS 13
• use Sidecar on a Mac running macOS Catalina that Apple blacklisted
• patch the SidecarCore framework to remove device restrictions
• turn an unsupported Mac into a Sidecar-capable second display host
• avoid buying new hardware just to use Sidecar

When to choose

• you have an older iPad or Mac running iPadOS 13 / macOS Catalina and want Sidecar
• you want a sandboxed GUI tool instead of manually hex-editing SidecarCore
• you are comfortable with a process involving recovery-partition restarts

When to avoid

• you are on macOS Big Sur or later, since this targets Catalina only
• you need guaranteed wireless Sidecar, which may not work on older devices
• you are unwilling to modify system frameworks or restart into the recovery partition

Facets

application · maturity maintenance

security developer-tools apple-ecosystem hardware desktop-applications sidecar patch hex-editing system-tweak ipados catalina unsupported-hardware macos desktop

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="ben-z/free-sidecar")