Transcription
Do you have a Mac that you wish that you could install a newer version of macOS onto? I'm going to take you through the entire process of how to install newer versions of macOS even on unsupported hardware. The only thing to really consider is that your Mac is powerful enough to run these newer versions of macOS. So without further ado, let's jump into the video and get started.
Cool, so here we are in Big Sur. So I’ll open Safari and I'll do a search – just to see the latest version of macOS I can actually install onto this computer. So firstly I'll click on the Apple menu and click on ‘About this Mac’. I'll move this over here. As you can see this is a mid-2014 iMac. It's running an Intel Core i5 processor and it's pretty limited on RAM – it's got 8 GB of RAM. So the first thing I'll do is do a search for what macOS’s my Mac can run. Here we go and I'll click on the first link. It's a pretty good one from Macworld so shout out to Macworld – this is a great article. Very, very helpful. So if I scroll down here, what I want to look for is mid-2014. I’ll get rid of this advert and I'll keep scrolling down. So I'm actually on Big Sur. So this is Big Sur here and it is compatible with iMacs from 2014 or later. This is indeed a 2014 iMac however if I scroll up here, one version later is Monterey which I have used in the past quite extensively. This however is only compatible with iMacs from 2015 or later so I couldn't actually install macOS Monterey onto this iMac without using the patcher which I'm about to show you how to use.
So what I'm going to do now is do a search for ‘OpenCore Patcher’. There it is – OpenCore Legacy Patcher. And this is the website, so I'll click on ‘Getting Started’. I want to make sure that the OpenCore Legacy Patcher can be installed onto this Mac. I'll Command + Click ‘Supported Models’ to open a new tab. Let's scroll down here. There. And because this computer is an iMac, I'll click on the iMac link and that'll take me down the list. Now I want to find out what the identifier of this Mac is. So to do that I'll just have to click on ‘System Report’. As you can see, it is an iMac14,4. So I’ll scroll down this list here. There we go – the iMac14,4 from mid 2014 so this is indeed compatible with the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. I'll close that tab and then go to ‘Download and build the Mac OS installer’. I can close ‘System Information’ while I'm at it. And then as you can see to start off you'll want to grab the app. So I'll click on this link here to the ‘OpenCore Legacy Patcher Release Apps’. This will take me to their GitHub page for the downloads. If I scroll down here, I want the latest release. So this is the latest release which is the ‘OpenCore-Patcher.pkg’ or package so I'll click that to download. That's downloading now to my downloads folder. That has downloaded so I'll double-click on the download from Safari and I can minimize everything from here. I'll close out of there and I'll actually close out of Safari so when I do my reboot it won't throw up the error of having shut down prematurely – so I'll quit Safari. And let's install the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. I'll just follow the prompts. Click ‘Continue’, ‘Install’, enter my password and that has completed. So I'll close out of the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It's asking ‘do I want to move the OpenCore Legacy Patcher installer to the bin’ – I'll move it to the bin and then open the launchpad. And here is, the OpenCore Legacy Patcher.
Cool, so firstly I want to build and install OpenCore so I'll click on that and that's detecting all the hardware in this computer. Then click ‘Install to disk’. Then I'll select the hard drive that macOS is installed onto and then also the EFI which is the boot launcher or boot menu for macOS, so I'll click on that. And that has completed. So now I want to reboot the computer and when I reboot the computer, as soon as I see the backlight or hear the chime, what I want to do is press and hold the Alt/Option key to bring up the boot menu so that I can select the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. So I'll click on ‘Reboot’ and then ‘Restart’ and this is shutting down now. Right, so the computer's booting up and there's the backlight so I'll hold down ‘Alt’. That brings up this menu here. So now if I selected this macOS HD, this will boot up Big Sur normally. However I want to boot through the EFI Boot from OpenCore so I'll select that. Then click on the arrow underneath and it's showing the options of which macOS versions I have currently and that's currently Big Sur so I'll let that boot up now. Cool and I'll log in as per normal. And here we are back now in Big Sur.
Now before I continue, I'm going to open up Safari and I'm going to go back to that Macworld website which should be in my history. Here is the website that I opened previously. Now this is important to note, if I scroll down the page, this will show me what versions of macOS currently still have security patches that are being updated. As you can see, Sequoia currently has patches that are being applied. And if I scroll down here Sonoma also is still being updated. Ventura is being updated as well – the most recent patch being in March of 2025 so that's pretty recent. However Monterey no longer gets security updates. For this exercise I'm going to download Ventura. This iMac is from mid-2014 so Ventura normally would never be able to run on this iMac because of the hardware incompatibility. However with the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, I can actually install Ventura.
So I’ll quit out of Safari and go back to my Launchpad and launch OpenCore Patcher. Now before I download an installer, I'm going to click on this ‘Post install root patch’ to make sure that all of the patches have been applied to the system. As you can see, no patches are required so I can go back to the main menu. I'm going to create a macOS installer. OpenCore have legit macOS installers so I'll click on ‘Download a macOS installer’. These are the options that I have. Now I can enable ‘Show older and beta versions’ however I'm going to deselect ‘Show older and beta versions’ and I'm going to select macOS Ventura. This installer is 12.2 GB so make sure that you have a USB drive handy. Cool, so with Ventura selected I'll click ‘Download’ and that'll take a few moments to download. So I'll speed up this bit of the video and I'll rejoin you as soon as this has completed downloading. That has completed. Now I want to create the macOS installer so I'll click on ‘Yes’ and I want to create the macOS Ventura installer so I'll click on that. It's saying there are no disks so I'll insert my USB drive. This is a 16 GB USB drive so it's definitely big enough. I'll plug that in and then click ‘Search for discs’ again. Cool, it's picked up the USB drive so I'll select that and then click ‘Yes’ and this will now create the macOS installer. This will take 30 or so minutes so I'll speed up this bit of the video and rejoin you as soon as this has completed.
Cool, so that's completed and it's asking me if I'd like to install OpenCore to the disk – I've actually already done that so I'll click ‘No’ and I can close out of the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Right, so here is the installer. Now so if I go into my Launchpad I actually want to get this icon here. So what I'm going to do is go into Finder and then go into ‘Applications’ and then let's find the Ventura installer. Here it is. So if I select that and then right-click and select ‘Get Info’ and I'll do the same for the USB drive – ‘Get Info’. All I have to do is select the icon – you'll see a blue outline around it. Then press ‘Command + C’ to copy. Then select the USB icon to get that blue ring around it and then press ‘Command +V’ to paste. And that is completed so now I can install macOS Ventura onto this computer so I'll show you that process as well. So what I'll do now is shut down the computer. Make sure everything's shut off and I'll shut down the computer. So press and hold the ‘Option’ key to bring up the boot menu. And with ‘OpenCore EFI Boot’ selected, press ‘Return/Enter’. Then using the arrow key, select the USB installer and press ‘Return/Enter’. We are in luck! What I need to do next is format the hard drive so I'll select ‘Disk Utility’ then click ‘Continue’. Next I'll select ‘Show all devices’. And here is the macOS hard drive I'll be installing Ventura onto. I've selected the container so I don't wipe the OpenCore EFI bootloader which is what would happen if I selected the whole device. To wipe the old macOS version and create a new empty partition, I'll select ‘Erase’. I'll leave the name and format as is and click ‘Erase’. That's completed so I'll click ‘Done’ and now I can close out of ‘Disk Utility’. Next I'll select ‘Install macOS Ventura’ then click ‘Continue’ then ‘Continue’ again. Click ‘Agree’ to the Licence Agreement and ‘Agree’ again. Cool, next I'll select the empty hard drive I just prepared and click ‘Continue’ and then let the installer do its installing. The computer will reboot a couple of times.
Here we are at the Options stage so I'll select my location and click ‘Continue’. The language settings are good so I'll click ‘Continue’. I don't need to set up Accessibility so I'll click ‘Not now’ and for ‘Data and Privacy’, I'll click ‘Continue’. I recommend not to use ‘Migration’ until OpenCore is fully set up so I'll click ‘Not now’. I'll set up my Apple ID later so I'll click ‘Set up later’ then click ‘Skip’ and then click ’Agree’ to the Terms and conditions’ and ‘Agree’ again. Next I'll enter my login account details then click ‘Continue’. I won't enable Location Services so I'll click ‘Continue’ and then ‘Don't use’. Next I'll manually select the time zone I'm in by clicking the location on the map and then click ‘Continue’. I'll turn off Analytics then click ‘Continue’. I won't set up Screen Time Insights so I'll click ‘Set up later’. I'll also disable Siri then click ‘Continue’. I do prefer the dark theme so I'll select that then click ‘Continue’. The Keyboard Setup Assistant appears here because I am using an aftermarket keyboard but I know this keyboard works perfectly fine so I'll click ‘Quit’.
Cool, so here we are in macOS Ventura. To complete this process, what I need to do is go to my Launchpad and launch the OpenCore Patcher. Then go over to Post-install Root Patch and click that. As you can see there are available patches for my system and this will enable macOS Ventura to be fully operational on this computer. So I'll click ‘Start root patching’ and this shouldn't take too long. Cool, and so it's now asking me to reboot the system so I'll do that now. Click ’Reboot’ and again, when it reboots I'll have to press and hold ‘Alt/Option’ to select the OpenCore EFI bootloader so I'll deselect that. Click ‘Restart’. And there's the backlight so I'll hold down ‘Alt/Option’ and this time what I want to do is press ‘Ctrl’ and as you can see the selector changes. What this means is that if I hold down ‘Ctrl’ and then press the button here, every time my computer loads it'll load into the OpenCore boot loader which is exactly what I want so I'll select that. And that's my USB drive. So with the macOS HD selected, it'll boot up my computer. And I'll log in now. There we go, we are all done. So I can now use macOS Ventura and set it up how I like. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.