The Extensions preference pane in macOS 10.15
The Extensions pane of the System Preferences in macOS was developed by Apple to allow users to manage system extensions and kexts installed on their Mac.
History[]
The Extensions preference pane adds functionality to macOS similar to the Extensions Manager from classic Mac OS.[1][2] For earlier versions of Mac OS X, developers previously created kernel extensions (kexts) to directly modify the system's kernel, but this was deemed a security risk without a straighforward graphical user interface to manage them. The Extensions preference pane was introduced in OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) in 2014 to help manage these extensions. Apple then introduced system extensions in macOS Catalina (10.15) in 2019 as a more secure alternative to kexts that would only operate in user space. Starting in macOS 10.15.4, the continued use of kernel extensions would trigger a warning to the user.[3] Support for kexts would start to be phased out in macOS Big Sur except for Apple-approved enterprise developers.[4] Any legacy kexts still installed would require user approval to be loaded upon every startup.[5]
References[]
- ↑ Road to Mac OS X Leopard: System Preferences by Prince McLean, AppleInsider. 2007-10-24.
- ↑ The untold history of macOS System Preferences by Arun Venkatesan. 2020-09-17.
- ↑ Apple deprecating macOS kernel extensions (KEXTs) is a great win for security, by Catalin Cimpanu, ZDNet. 2020-02-07.
- ↑ Enterprise management of legacy system extensions in macOS Big Sur, Apple Support. 2020-12-08.
- ↑ Kernel extensions in macOS, Apple Support. 2020-12-14.
External links[]
 System Preferences
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| Notes: Items in gray indicate panes of System Preferences that were merged or renamed. Items in |