By Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
Publication Date: 2026-04-04 18:39:00
Apple has signed a driver for AMD or Nvidia eGPUs connected to Apple Silicon but there are some big caveats, and it won’t improve your graphics. Here’s what they’re for.
When Apple announced the use of eGPUs with AMD Radeon cards in 2016, we were pretty excited. Full support shipped in early 2017 and for a few short years, Thunderbolt provided an excellent graphics-accelerating one-cable dock to our MacBook Pros.
But even then, Apple has stubbornly prevented modern Nvidia GPUs from working with Macs. And, with the change to Apple Silicon, Apple effectively killed off any real use of an externally usable Nvidia GPU with its Mac lineup.
While the long-time feud between the two companies is still going on, Apple has made one small change that will be hugely beneficial to AI researchers. A third-party eGPU driver for AI research has been signed by Apple, making a setup far easier.
But, there’s a big limit. Video to an external monitor is not accelerated at all.
In an X posting on April 1, Tiny Corp declared that Apple had approved its driver for AMD and Nvidia cards in eGPUS for use on Apple Silicon. Using a Thunderbolt or USB 4-supporting eGPU enclosure, the setup now finally does something on a Mac again.
The instructions for the driver explain that it requires a Mac running macOS 12.1 or later, a spare USB4 or Thunderbolt 3 port or newer, and a supported GPU with an enclosure that delivers sufficient power to drive the card.
Supported cards are AMD…
