Very simple, work in progress input driver for the SPI keyboard / trackpad found on 12" MacBooks (2015 and later) and newer MacBook Pros (late 2016 and later).

Using it:

If you're on a MacBook8,1 (2015) you may need the irqpoll kernel parameter. To get this driver to work on all other MacBooks and MacBook Pros, you'll need to boot the kernel with intremap=nosid if you're running a kernel before 4.11. In all cases make sure you don't have noapic in your kernel options.

On the 2015 MacBook you need to (re)compile your kernel with CONFIG_X86_INTEL_LPSS=n if running a kernel before 4.14. On all kernels you need ensure the spi_pxa2xx_platform module is loaded (if you don't have that module, rebuild your kernel with CONFIG_SPI_PXA2XX=m).

On all other MacBook's and MacBook Pros you need to make sure both the spi_pxa2xx_platform and intel_lpss_pci modules are loaded (if these don't exist, you need to (re)compile your kernel with CONFIG_SPI_PXA2XX=m and CONFIG_MFD_INTEL_LPSS_PCI=m).

DKMS module (Debian & co):

As root, do the following:

apt install dkms
git clone https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver.git /usr/src/applespi-0.1
dkms install -m applespi -v 0.1

echo -e "\n# applespi\napplespi\nintel_lpss_pci\nspi_pxa2xx_platform" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
update-initramfs -u

What works:

• Basic Typing
• FN keys
• Driver unloading (no more hanging)
• Basic touchpad functionality (even right click, handled by libinput)
• MT touchpad functionality (two finger scroll, probably others)
• Interrupts!
• Suspend / resume

What doesn't work:

• Key rollover (properly)
• Wakeup on keypress / touchpad

Known bugs:

• Occasionally, the SPI device can get itself into a state where it causes an interrupt storm. There should be a way of resetting it, or better yet avoiding this state altogether.

Interrupts:

Interrupts are now working! This means that the driver is no longer polled, and should no longer be a massive battery drain. For more information on how the driver receives interrupts, see the discussion here

Touchpad:

The touchpad protocol is the same as the bcm5974 driver. Perhaps there is a nice way of utilizing it? For now, bits of code have just been copy and pasted.

Debugging:

The debug module parameter can be used to turn debugging output on (and off) dynamically, and can be set in all the usual ways (e.g. via kernel command-line (applespi.debug=0x1), via sysfs (echo 0x10000 | sudo tee /sys/module/applespi/parameters/debug), etc.).

Some useful values are (since the value is a bitmask, these can be combined):

• 0x10000 - determine touchpad values range
• 0x1 - turn on logging of touchpad initialization packets
• 0x6 - turn on logging of backlight and caps-lock-led packets

Some useful threads:

• https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108331
• https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891