Although the lifespan of a mac It is usually long-lived, sooner or later its time comes. And although we usually change it for a most powerful model or with a newer processor, sometimes we are forced to change Macs because Apple excludes your model from the list of Macs compatible with the latest version of macOS. If so, you’re left unable to upgrade your old Mac. Or was that before? OpenCore Legacy Patcher.
In these cases, it hurts you can’t update the software even if your Mac continues to work, the battery lasts and the rest of the components do their job well. There are many reasons for this, such as your Mac not perform well at all or that there are functions that are too demanding in terms of resource consumption. But sometimes it’s a matter of Shelving a Mac that’s several years old behind their backs.
The good news is that now you can upgrade your old Mac to macOS Ventura although it is not part of the models graced with this update. The solution does not come from Apple. A group of developers has created an application that allows you to give your Mac a second useful life thanks to a patch that makes it easier to update adventure. Obviously, your Mac will still be old. But at least you can now use the latest operating system.
The name of this solution for older Macs is called OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It is an open source project available on GitHub which, in turn, is based on a previous project, OpenCore bootloader or OpenCore, no more. The result is that you can install macOS Big Sur and newer versions like macOS Ventura on Macs that are already outdated.
What Mac models can be upgraded?
With the current version of OpenCore, any Mac with SSE 4.1 CPU and 64-bit firmware It is supported to update macOS using this patch. This affects MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iMac, Mac Pro, and even Xserve. 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 aspire to macOS Monterey (12), but others will have the opportunity to upgrade to macOS Ventura (13). That is, you can Upgrade from macOS 10.9 to macOS 11, 12, or 13.
This is the list of 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 you get your hopes up, let’s be real. That you can upgrade your old or outdated Mac to Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura It doesn’t mean that everything will go smoothly. There are functions that will not be active to avoid performance problems. Others will work that way. And in some cases, you may run into one-off hardware issues. It is not an exact science.
But we are talking about equipment that already they have given their all. Perhaps you have already replaced them with a newer Mac or are in the process of doing so. Giving them a second life with this update is still a good option if we don’t get too many illusions.
How to upgrade your old Mac with OpenCore
We will not get very technical, but it is good to know what exactly does OpenCore do and this patch called OpenCore Legacy Patcher. In his documentation, he explains that it is a “sophisticated bootloader which is used to inject and patch data into memory, rather than on disk. This means we can get a near native experience on many unsupported Macs.”
So to implement OpenCore to update our old Mac we must check if our model is compatible. Before we have seen the list of models by Mac and year, but to know exactly what you will find it is convenient look at your page of supported models. For example, you will see that a 2010 MacBooks you can upgrade to macOS Monterey but not macOS Ventura. or what a Macbook Pro from 2012 onwards it will work fine with the patch and you will be able to use macOS Ventura.
Before we get started, it is worth remembering that when we do any installing or updating macOS should make one backup of our files and documents. This way we will avoid major problems if something does not go as it should. We can upload that content to iCloud or to an external disk. By hand or with the help of 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 versions as is. We will have to customize it to work well on our outdated Mac. But do not spread panic. Those responsible for OpenCore have thought about it and provide us with a tool. Yes indeed. You should have on hand a USB 16 GB or more to put the installer there.
So we download OpenCore Legacy Patcher, open the app and click on Create macOS Installer. Next, you must click on Download macOS Installer to download or Use existing macOS Installer if you already have one downloaded. Then you will see a list of versions of macOS compatible with your Mac model. After downloading, you must place it in the USB that we mentioned before. Try to empty it because previous content will be deleted.
Prepare and install OpenCore
We return to OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Now we have to prepare the patch itself, OpenCore, so that boot your old Mac correctly and thus update to macOS Ventura or the most recent version compatible with your Mac. To do this, open the OpenCore app and click on Build and Install OpenCore. In the next window, click on BuildOpenCore. We will see that a series of Terminal actions appear below. We don’t have to do anything.
When finished, we will see that the button changes to Install OpenCore. We press it and follow the instructions. Basically you will have to tell the installer which is the disk or USB drive where we have the macOS installer. When finished, we can restart the Mac to start the process of installation / update.
We’ll restart the Mac as usual, but when the screen turns on or you hear the startup noise, hold down the Option key. So we will see the EFI boot menu and we will see the main disk and the USB drive. We choose the option EFI Boot. And, on the next screen, we choose the macOS installer.
The next thing we will see will be the macOS update process. Something you may have seen before. Simply follow the instructions of the official wizard until the installation is complete. At the end, we will only have a few details left and so keep our obsolete Mac up to date.
What to do after upgrading your old Mac
Although before we have installed OpenCore or, rather, his patch OpenCore Legacy Patcher on a memory or USB drive, once we have updated macOS we can make the patch boot from the Mac itself. This way we will save the USB in case we need it in the future.
To change the boot we will have to open the OpenCore Legacy Patcher application again and follow the steps that we saw before after clicking on Build and Install OpenCore. But instead of installing it on the USB drive we will choose the main disk. Then you just have to restart the Mac, hold down the Option button to see the EFI menu and choose the main drive to boot by default.
The process to install OpenCore and thus update your old Mac is relatively simple. But if you have any questions you can check your documentation official. There are also some problems that you can find with specific Macs or with functions that do not work quite well. And if you need help, the OpenCore developer team and its user community have a discord server in which comment how the patch works and if you have managed to revive your obsolete Mac.