Although poppy lifespan He is usually durable, sooner or later his time comes. And although we usually change it to most powerful model or with a newer processor, sometimes we have to change Macs because Apple removes your model from the list of compatible Macs. latest version of macos. If so, you won’t be able to update your old Mac. Or was it before? Legacy OpenCore patcher.
In these cases it hurts you can’t update the software even if your Mac keeps running, the battery lasts and the rest of the components do their job well. There are many reasons for this, such as your Mac did not perform well at all or that there are features that are too demanding in terms of resource consumption. But sometimes it’s a question Shelving a Mac that’s a few years old behind their backs.
The good news is that you can now upgrade your old Mac to macOS Ventura although this is not part of the models adorned with this update. The solution does not come from Apple. A group of developers have created an application that allows you to give your Mac a second useful life thanks to update patch adventure. Obviously your Mac will still be old. But at least now you can use the latest operating system.
The name of this solution for older Macs is Legacy OpenCore patcher. This is an open source project available on GitHub, which in turn is based on the previous project. OpenCore Loader or open core, no more. As a result, you can install macOS Big Sur and newer versions for example, macOS Ventura on Macs that are already outdated.
Which Mac models can be upgraded?
With the current version of OpenCore, any Mac with CPU SSE 4.1 and 64-bit firmware Updating macOS with this fix is supported. This applies to MacBooks, MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, Mac minis, iMacs, Mac Pros, and even Xserves. Depending on the age of each Mac model, you can upgrade to different versions of macOS. In other words, there are models that can only strive for macOS Monterey (12), but others will have the opportunity to switch to macOS Ventura (13). That is, you can Upgrading from macOS 10.9 to macOS 11, 12, or 13.
This is the list Mac Models compatible:
- Macbook from 2008 to 2016.
- Macbook Air from 2009 to 2017.
- Macbook Pro from 2008 to 2016.
- Mac mini from 2009 to 2017.
- iMac from 2007 to 2017.
- Mac Pro from 2008 to 2013
Before we get our hopes up, let’s be realistic. What You Can Upgrade Your Old or Outdated Mac to Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura This does not mean that everything will go smoothly. There are features that will not be active to avoid performance issues. This is how others will work. And in some cases, you may encounter one-time hardware issues. It’s not an exact science.
But we are talking about equipment that is already they gave everything. You may have already replaced them with a new Mac or are about to do so. Giving them a second life with this update is still a good option if we don’t get too many illusions.
How to update your old Mac with OpenCore
We won’t go into technical details, but it’s good to know what exactly does OpenCore do and this patch is called Legacy OpenCore patcher. The documentation explains that this is a “complex loader which is used to insert and patch data into memory rather than disk. This means that we can get an almost native experience on many unsupported Macs.”
So, in order to implement OpenCore to upgrade our old Mac, we have to check if our model is compatible. We used to see a list of models by Mac and year, but to know exactly what you’ll find, it’s handy to look at the supported models page. For example, you will see that Macbooks 2010 you can upgrade to macOS Monterey, but not to macOS Ventura. or what Macbook Pro since 2012 it will work fine with the patch and you should be able to use macOS Ventura.
Before we begin, it is worth remembering that when we do any installing or updating macOS gotta make one backup our files and documents. This way we will avoid serious problems if something goes wrong. We can upload this content to iCloud or to an external drive. Manually or with Time Machine.
Download and Prepare the macOS Installer
The second step consists of download and prepare the installer from macOS. We cannot use the official installer for macOS Ventura or earlier without modification. We will have to set it up so that it works well on our outdated Mac. But do not sow panic. Those responsible for OpenCore thought about it and provided us with a tool. Yes, indeed. You must have on hand USB 16 GB or more put the installer there.
So we downloaded OpenCore Legacy Patcher, opened the app and clicked Create macOS Installer. Next, you need to click on Download macOS installer download or Use an existing macOS installer if you already have one downloaded. You will then see a list of macOS versions that are compatible with your Mac model. Once downloaded, you should place it on the USB drive we mentioned earlier. Try to clean it up because previous content will be removed.
Prepare and install OpenCore
Back to OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Now it remains for us to prepare the OpenCore patch itself in order to boot up your old mac correctly and thus update to macOS Ventura or the latest version compatible with your Mac. To do this, open the OpenCore application and click Building and installing OpenCore. In the next window, click on BuildOpenCore. We will see that a series of terminal actions will appear below. We don’t have to do anything.
When done, we will see the button change to Install open core. Click it and follow the instructions. Essentially, you will need to tell the installer which drive or USB drive the macOS installer is on. When done, we can restart the Mac to start the process. installation/upgrade.
We will restart the Mac as usual, but when the screen turns on or you hear the startup sound, hold down the Option key. So, we will see the EFI boot menu, as well as the main disk and the USB drive. We choose the option EFI Boot. And on the next screen we choose macOS installer.
The next thing we’ll see is the macOS update process. Something you may have seen before. Just follow the instructions of the official wizard to complete the installation. At the end, we will only have a few details left, and so keep our aging Mac up to date.
What to do after updating your old Mac
Although before we established open core or rather his stripe Legacy OpenCore patcher in memory or USB stick, after updating macOS we can make a patch boot from the Mac itself. This way we’ll save the USB in case we need it in the future.
To change the download we will have to open the OpenCore Legacy Patcher application again and follow the steps we saw earlier after clicking on Build and install OpenCore. But instead of installing to a USB drive, we will choose the main drive. Then you just need to restart your Mac, hold the Option button to see the EFI menu and choose the default primary boot drive.
The process of installing OpenCore and thus updating your old Mac is relatively simple. But if you have any questions, you can refer to its official documentation. There are also some issues that you may find with certain Macs or with features that don’t work well enough. And if you need help, the OpenCore development team and user community have a Discord server where comment how the patch works and if you managed to revive your obsolete Mac.
Source: Hiper Textual
I’m Ben Stock, a highly experienced and passionate journalist with a career in the news industry spanning more than 10 years. I specialize in writing content for websites, including researching and interviewing sources to produce engaging articles. My current role is as an author at Gadget Onus, where I mainly cover the mobile section.
