Apple - Can I mount the root (system) filesystem as writable in Big Sur?
DISCLAIMER: have a good backup and plan to erase and reinstall your Mac from the internet before trying this procedure. A mistake can prevent your system from starting without assistance.
- Disable FileVault
- Reboot into recovery mode and run:
csrutil authenticated-root disable
- Reboot back into MacOS
- Find your root mount's device - run
mount
and chop off the last s, e.g. if your root is/dev/disk1s2s3
, you'll mount/dev/disk1s2
- Create a new directory, for example
~/mount
mkdir -p -m777 ~/mount
- Run
sudo mount -o nobrowse -t apfs DISK_PATH MOUNT_PATH
, using the values from abovesudo mount -o nobrowse -t apfs /dev/disk1s2 ~/mount
- Modify the files under the mounted directory
- Run
sudo bless --folder MOUNT_PATH/System/Library/CoreServices --bootefi --create-snapshot
- Reboot your system, and the changes will take place