macOSiin

macOSiin is a Unix-like operating system project developed as an independent, open-source experimental platform intended to study and evoke aspects of the macOS user experience without any affiliation to Apple Inc. It is designed for educational use, software development experimentation, and demonstrations of system architecture rather than as a production-ready alternative to macOS.

The project emphasizes a desktop-oriented workflow, featuring a dock-like launcher, window management with tiled and overlapping modes, and a Finder-inspired file browser. The interface aims to be familiar to users of macOS while remaining customizable and extensible through userland components and optional theming. Its design encourages exploring system internals, such as the way services communicate, how device drivers are loaded, and how applications interact with a POSIX-compliant environment.

Under the hood, macOSiin is described as a modular Unix-like system with a kernel that provides typical operating-system services and a userland built from common open-source components. It targets portability across architectures, supporting x86-64 and ARM64 platforms, and is designed to run in virtual environments as well as on compatible hardware through a hardware abstraction layer. The project typically uses a package management approach that emphasizes reproducibility and ease of experimentation.

Development and governance are community-driven, with contributions from volunteers contributing code, documentation, and testing. While it garners interest from students and hobbyists, it remains incomplete for broad production use, with gaps in hardware support, stability, and polished integrations.

See also: macOS, Unix-like operating systems, open-source desktop environments.