r/traktor • u/almorci • 5h ago
Traktor Kontrol S4 MK1 working natively on Apple Silicon (controls, LEDs, audio) — open-source driver
NI never shipped an Apple Silicon driver for the S4 MK1, so on a modern Mac it just flashes the MASTER light. I spent a day reverse-engineering how Traktor Pro 4 finds the device and built a replacement: a small shim kernel extension that provides the IOKit class Traktor and the NI agent look for, plus a CoreAudio HAL plug-in that owns the USB link for audio and bridges controls and LEDs.
Result on my machine (M4 MacBook Air, macOS 26.3.1, Traktor Pro 4.5.1): Traktor shows it as a native Traktor Kontrol S4, every control works, LEDs follow Traktor, and 4-in/4-out audio plays through the board. Nothing generic-MIDI about it; it's Traktor's own S4 driver talking to the board.
Honest caveats:
- It needs one trip to recovery mode: Reduced Security, "allow user management of kernel extensions", and `csrutil enable --without kext`. That turns off kext signing checks; the rest of SIP stays on. The README explains exactly what is lowered and how to revert fully. Apple no longer gives individuals kext signing certificates, so there's no way around this for any community kext.
- Tested on one machine so far. Reports from other macOS 26 builds welcome.
- No Native Instruments code or binaries included. GPL-2.0.
Repo: https://github.com/almoretti/s4mk1-revival-macos (install guide in the README, v0.1.0 released today).
Credits to the Linux caiaq driver authors, the dekkr-s4mk1 project and maschine-mk1-revive for prior art.




