Another annual tech extravaganza, WWDC, and macOS 27 arrived on schedule. Skins changed, version numbers increased, but its biggest upgrade, Apple Intelligence, remains unavailable on China-market devices. Another update for everywhere around mainland China, and we remain second-class citizens.
Last year's macOS 26 did not bother me much. This year, with the machine already in my hands, I decided to tinker. It is a China-market MacBook Air M5 running macOS 27 (26A5353q). The process has two parts: enabling Apple Intelligence with a kernel extension, then enabling the ChatGPT extension, whose own geofencing is much stricter than Apple Intelligence's general regional controls.
How it works
Apple Intelligence's overall regional restrictions can be reduced to this:
MGGetStringAnswer("RegionCode") == "CH" → Apple 智能关闭
RegionCode is read in real time from the region-info property of IOPlatformExpertDevice in IORegistry. On China-market machines it is CH/A. In macOS 27, eligibilityd recalculates eligibility in real time using SwiftData, so the old plist-editing and uchg-locking tricks no longer work. Changes disappear on reboot.
The fundamental fix is to change region-info at the IORegistry level. That is how GitHub's RegionSpoof works: load a kext matching IOPlatformExpertDevice, then in start() set region-info to LL/A (US) and country-of-origin to USA. Every process reads the US region directly at the source. Eligibility, model delivery, and the frontend UI all become available without injecting into each process separately.
The approach is simple and thorough, but requires loading a kernel extension. That means disabling SIP.
SIP is unavoidable
Loading a third-party kext on Apple Silicon requires disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP), switching to Permissive security mode, and allowing third-party kernel extensions. This requires Recovery mode.
Shut down, hold the power button to enter Recovery, open Terminal, and run:
csrutil disable
Reboot into the system, then run this in the project directory:
sudo ./install.sh
The script checks SIP and Apple Silicon status, installs the kext, configures a LaunchDaemon for startup, and refreshes the Apple Intelligence daemons. macOS blocks the first kext load; allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security, then reboot.
There is a trap here:
Many guides tell you to add the amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1 boot argument when disabling SIP. With AMFI disabled, the SEP refuses to provide hardware attestation for Private Cloud Compute. Cloud AI becomes unavailable, leaving only on-device features. Tone rewriting, Image Playground, and other PCC-dependent features will not work.
After installation, check and verify the status with:
sudo ./install.sh status # SIP / AMFI / region / kext / 资格 一览 ioreg -ard1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | plutil -p - | grep region-info # 应为 0x4c4c2f41 即 "LL/A"
region-info should be LL/A, and eligibility domain GREYMATTER should be 4 (eligible). Reboot and open Settings: Apple Intelligence options appear, and Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, and Foundation Models all work normally.
Perfect!
The ChatGPT extension
The problem was Siri's ChatGPT extension. Siri settings should show a ChatGPT extension toggle and allow account sign-in. Siri also displayed “Apple Intelligence support for ChatGPT is still downloading.”
At first I assumed the download really was stuck. Capturing generativeexperiencesd logs revealed that downloading was not the issue at all: the provider below had been marked hidden.
Retrieved provider status for ChatGPT: .forciblyHidden, info: partnerNotSelected, useCaseDoesNotAllowCurrentIPCountryCode, useCaseDoesNotAllowUserLocaleRegion
There are three reasons. partnerNotSelected is a consequence of the missing toggle, so set that aside. The real problems are the other two: the current IP country code and the system region do not qualify.
Interesting. The kext had already changed the device to the US region, and RegionCode was US. But the ChatGPT extension does not read the device's RegionCode; it uses countryd's real-time estimate of the country you are physically in.
Dealing with countryd
I connected to a Japanese proxy node and confirmed that my exit IP was Japanese. Even Apple's own GeoIP endpoint returned JP:
curl -s https://gspe1-ssl.ls.apple.com/pep/gcc # 返回 JP
In principle, this should lift the restriction. But after restarting generativeexperiencesd to reevaluate, isDisabled remained true. Examining countryd revealed a surprisingly complicated mechanism.
countryd determines the country using this priority order:
WiFiAP (优先级 1) > Location 定位 (优先级 4) > GeoIP (优先级 5)
The proxy only affects IP, the lowest-priority GeoIP source. Higher-priority sources include Wi-Fi access-point positioning and coordinates from Location Services. Both located me in mainland China.
Location Services was easy: disable it and the LatLonLocation signal disappears. The locale was easy too: change the region from mainland China to Japan in System Settings. AppleLocale changes from zh_CN to zh-Hans_JP, satisfying useCaseDoesNotAllowUserLocaleRegion.
Wi-Fi was trickier. I assumed switching to a phone hotspot would work: surely its BSSID would not be in Apple's location database. I connected and captured logs. Initially, things looked as expected:
21:49:42 "WiFi AP update", "countryCode":"" ← 热点本身查不到国家，是空的 21:49:51 "WiFi AP update", "countryCode":"CN" ← 9 秒后又变回 CN
The hotspot's own BSSID returned nothing. Nine seconds later, however, the country was CN again. Apple's Wi-Fi positioning does not just inspect the access point you are connected to; it scans all nearby Wi-Fi signals. I was on my hotspot, but my home router, my neighbors' routers, and those throughout the building still located me in China.
As long as Wi-Fi is on, the hotspot you connect to makes no difference. Nearby Chinese access points keep giving you away.
Only Apple Can Do
Turning off Wi-Fi
Disable Wi-Fi and use a wired connection, and countryd loses all physical location signals, leaving GeoIP as its only source.
I used iPhone USB tethering and routed all traffic on the Mac through a Japanese proxy, keeping Wi-Fi off. Checking countryd again, GeoIP finally showed Japan:
"CACHE: Geo IP country code changing", "from":"CN", "to":"JP, priority = 5 (GeoIP)"
But the overall estimate was still CN. Investigation showed that turning Wi-Fi off does not send a “clear” event. countryd caches its last WiFiAP=CN result on disk and reloads it on every restart. Since it has the highest priority, GeoIP still cannot win.
Then delete the cache:
sudo plutil -p /var/db/com.apple.countryd/countryCodeCache.plist
Stop the service, remove the cache, and restart countryd with Wi-Fi off:
sudo launchctl bootout system/com.apple.countryd sudo rm -f /var/db/com.apple.countryd/countryCodeCache.plist # [!code highlight] sudo launchctl bootstrap system /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.countryd.plist
At last, countryd's country became Japan. ChatGPT's forciblyHidden state cleared, and the extension toggle appeared in Settings.
Finally!
Once the toggle appears, enable ChatGPT. If you have a Plus or Pro account, you can sign in.
Once the ChatGPT extension has been enabled once, it remains usable even after restoring Wi-Fi and your previous region settings.