We're developing a custom Thunderbolt device and want to expose it to macOS as an ethernet interface, while owning the full network stack implementation up to and including IP, TCP and UDP — bypassing the macOS network stack for those layers. Is IOEthernetController the right DriverKit approach for this, and does it allow intercepting traffic before it reaches the macOS IP stack?

Hello, I am currently developing a headless macOS daemon (HarmonBridge) that requires extremely low-latency, high-bandwidth UDP video streaming between a Mac and a Linux host over a dedicated 2.5GbE/5GbE local network link. We are utilizing widely available Realtek RTL8156 / RTL8156B based USB 2.5G network adapters. Under macOS, these adapters default to the generic com.apple.DriverKit.AppleUserECM driver. The hardware itself natively supports Jumbo Frames (MTU 9000), but the DriverKit implementation artificially restricts the MTU cap to 1500 bytes. Because we are forced through MTU 1500, we are incurring significant performance penalties: Excessive IP fragmentation for our large UDP video payloads. Unnecessary CPU overhead due to increased hardware interrupts and header processing at 2.5Gbps speeds. For a latency-critical application like ours, reducing CPU interrupts and utilizing true hardware-level Jumbo Frames is essential. My Questions: Is there an undocumented boot-arg or network sysctl parameter that permits overriding the AppleUserECM 1500 MTU hard-limit for 2.5G USB adapters on Apple Silicon? Are there any roadmap plans from the DriverKit/Networking team to re-enable standard Jumbo Frame negotiation for RTL8156 hardware using the generic ECM driver? If the answer to both is no, does Apple grant NetworkingDriverKit Entitlements to independent developers specifically for the purpose of writing custom hardware overrides to patch missing MTU features in the default ECM stack? Because AppleUserECM effectively acts as a gatekeeper to the underlying MAC/PHY capabilities of these modern USB NICs, any guidance on achieving wire-native MTU 9000 under the current DriverKit paradigm would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

I am seeking clarification on whether the various driverkit entitlement families (com.apple.developer.driverkit.family.*) are available for development on my local Mac without requesting entitlements from Apple. My experience is inconsistent with public statements made by Apple, and I am wondering if there have been changes to development entitlements as of 2026. I am hoping there is something obvious that I have missed. At WWDC2022 Apple stated that "In MacOS... In fact, all DriverKit family entitlements are now available to use for development." On these very forums, Eskimo himself also suggested this was the case in 2024. However, my own experience has been that in my provisioning profile on my paid developer account, I am not able to obtain com.apple.developer.driverkit.family.networking for the purpose of developing a driver for unsupported hardware. As you can see, I do not have the networking entitlement: { .. "Entitlements" => { ... "com.apple.developer.driverkit" => true "com.apple.developer.driverkit.transport.usb" => [ 0 => { "idVendor" => "*" } ] And there appears to be no mechanism to add these entitlement:

Hi, We were planning on using DriverKit to develop a USB Driver on IOS for iPhone. Within the DriverKit website, it say 'IOS16.0+' which lead us to believe it was compatible with iPhones running IOS16.0+. However, it appears DriverKit is only available for iPads running iPadOS, and computers running macOS. Are there any alternatives that would allow us to create a device specific USB driver for an iPhone running IOS?