There’s a patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on older Macs available – theīig-sur-micropatcher can be downloaded from GitHub.Ĭheck that the patcher is compatible with your Mac – you should find this information on the patch page (linked above). Install Big Sur on an unsupported Mac is similarly tricky, but, again, this doesn’t mean that installing Big Sur on an older Mac isn’t possible. How to install Big Sur on an unsupported Mac However, you should not install these, but ideally again create a USB stick with the current installation files and install the update in this way. Once you have installed macOS Monterey (or whatever version you choose), updates will appear in Software Updates as soon as they are available.

How to install macOS updates on an unsupported Mac Steps outlined here if you have any problems. Next you need to select Install macOS, you should see the option Install macOS Big Sur in the OpenCore Picker.

When the Mac starts up there will be a black screen with a few drive options.

Once that has been created you need to reboot your Mac while holding down the Option (Alt) key.

(The recommendation is to install on a FAT32 drive.

The next step is to choose Install OpenCore to USB/internal drive from the options.

Once in Build OpenCore the process should quickly build and then you will return to the main menu.

Choose Build OpenCore (unless you wish to run the patcher on a different Mac, in which case it’s Change Model).

After extracting the archive from your download you will find the file “OpenCore-Patcher.app”.

Click on the Code and Download Zip buttons. You can download the latest version of the patcher we mentioned above

Next you need to obtain the patcher software that will essentially trick the installation files of the version of macOS you want to install into believing that the Mac is compatible.

You’ll be able to find the installation files in Applications. How to create a bootable installer of macOS in a separate article.

Now you need to load these installation files onto a USB stick and prepare the USB stick for installing macOS Monterey.

They are 12GB so expect this to take a while. If they don’t show up in Software Update you can get the installation files from the You’ll have to obtain these using a compatible Mac.

First you will need to obtain the installation files for the version of macOS you are after – in this case Monterey.

Before you do anything back up your Mac, just in case.

The procedure for updating to a new version of macOS on incompatible Macs is as follows: You can find a list of all the Macs supported Before installing Monterey on an older Mac, make sure that your Mac is compatible with the patcher. Note that macOS patchers cannot perform magic and not all Macs will be compatible.

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