Catalina (10.15) is the latest stable release of Apple's macOS. You will see some of the recent apps can only work on this version. And you have to upgrade macOS accordingly. However, only a small portion of Mac models are eligible for direct upgrade offered by Apple. What 's to do if you want to use Catalina on an unsupported Mac? This tutorial will show you how to install macOS Catalina on an unsupported Mac model.

1. Mac Os Download For Windows
2. Upgrade Unsupported Mac
3. Mac Os X Install Disk
4. Install Mac Os Vmware
5. Install Macos Mojave On Unsupported Mac
6. Install Unsupported Mac Os Downloads

1. Why macOS Catalina?

macOS Catalina is the last iteration of the macOS series, after which Apple has now moved to macOS 11 Big Sur. Not all Mac users will install Big Sur so soon after its release because they'll be waiting for all the major bugs to be fixed in an 11.x update. But there's also another reason: Big Sur is only meant for certain models of MacBooks and iMacs.

Your machine will restart and you should now be able to boot from the Mac OS 9 For Unsupported G4’s CD from MacOS9Lives.com. Any data stored in the NVRAM will be erased if the machine loses power (e.g. The main power cable is disconnected from a wall outlet/power adapter, or has a flat battery. I am currently researching installing OS X 10.13 High Sierra on unsupported Macs. I did the Sierra upgrade on a couple of MacPros 4,1 and it has worked excellently, after I did a firmware update patch to get it to read as a MacPro 5,1, so I am very optimistic on doing it again. The easy way to run macOS Catalina on your Unsupported Mac. Download Latest Version View Changelog. Current Version Info. Current Version: 1.4.4. You can download and install this package (if running OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later) to install the latest BootROM version (you MUST reboot after installing the package to apply the firmware update.

And some of the apps can not work on an old version of macOS, such as High Serria or Serria. You will receive the following messages if you try to run an app that only supports Catalina and later versions. You have to upgrade macOS to Catalina in such a case if the app is very important for you.

The same is true of Catalina as well, but Catalina is a more mature version and brings a lot of features to the table, such as the improved Siri, customizable smart lists, the new AI-based Photos app, better Notes search, refreshed Safari, and so on. Probably the most important change is the deprecation of iTunes into three separate entities for Music, TV, and Podcasts. That's why a large portion of users still prefer Catalina even if their device is compatible with Big Sur.

2. Official Support List by Catalina

Unfortunately, as in the case of Big Sur, macOS Catalina also does not support very old models of Apple devices. Here is the official support list. If your device is from an older year, you cannot upgrade to macOS Catalina the usual way.

• MacBook (Early 2015 or newer)
• MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)
• Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)
• iMac (Late 2012 or newer)
• iMac Pro (2017)

In addition, your video card will need to be pre-metal, and it works with specific series of GeForce, Radeon, and Intel graphics cards.

3. Unofficial Support List by Catalina

Thankfully, there's a way to patch macOS Catalina on your older system, which extends the list of supported devices. However, you will need to download macOS Catalina dmg file, burn it to a USB drive, and then install Catalina on your Mac by booting from the USB installer. The process is shown below and it works with the following unsupported Mac models.

• MacBook Pro Early 2008 or newer
• MacBook Air Late 2008 or newer
• Mac Mini Early 2009 or newer
• MacBook Early 2009 or newer
• iMac Early 2008 or newer

4. How to Create a macOS Catalina Bootable USB

UUByte DMG Editor is a fantastic disk image management utility for Apple's DMG files. Not only can you burn a DMG to a range of media storage devices but you can also extract files without having to mount the DMG as a virtual drive. Besides, it is a cross-platform application that works well on both Windows and macOS. This means you can create a bootable Catalina USB installer on a Windows PC.

Although it is meant for experienced users, the user interface, navigation, and feature layout have been simplified so even beginners can jump right in and get comfortable with the software. Here's the process in the form of steps you can duplicate on your Mac.

Warning: Please back up your Mac first before taking into real actions. This might brick your EFI chip with multiple EEPROM definitions.

Step 1: Download DMG file of macOS Catalina from the following sources. These site offer the latest version of the macOS Catalina, please download a copy to your Mac.

• Download Link 1: https://themacgo.com/macdownload/
• Download link 2: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/NW4r628CM

Step 2: Insert a USB drive and install UUByte DMG Editor application on a Mac or PC.

Step 3: Launch UUByte DMG Editor and select the 'Burn' option on the main page.

Step 4: On the inside page, hit the 'Browse' button and select the DMG file from your local storage. Check if your USB drive is displayed in the field below the DMG image field. If not, click on 'Change' button to select the correct drive.

Step 5: All you need to do is name your drive and hit 'Burn' button. You will see the progress as the USB installer is created.

When you see the success message, close UUByte DMG Editor and eject the drive. It is now ready for you to use in the macOS Catalina installation process described in the next section.

5. Install macOS Catalina on Unsupported Mac

Now, follow the steps shown below carefully to load the installer, erase your local disk, and install macOS Catalina from USB drive you created in above step.

Step 1: Boot Mac from USB Installer

To do this, insert the installer and hold down the Option key as you restart your Mac. In the Startup Manager, choose the drive name that you used in the installer creation process. You won't be able to use the mouse here so use the arrow key to select your drive and hit Enter.

Step 2: Wait Catalina Installer to Be Loaded

This could take a few minutes so be patient. Don't worry if the screen goes blank or if the progress bar looks like it's frozen. Don't do anything at this point.

Step 3: Erase Local Hard Drive

When macOS Catalina installation wizard is loaded, you'll be able to see macOS Utilities window with several options. Choose Disk Utility option and then Continue. In Disk Utility, choose your hard drive (usually Macintosh HD) and hit Erase, which you will see in the top menu bar.

In the popup window, make sure the Format is set to APFS and hit Erase, leaving everything else as it is. You may want to change the name of the local HDD but you can leave it as Macintosh HD. Exit Disk Utility, which will take you back to the macOS Utilities window.

Step 4: Start Installing Catalina on Unsupported Mac

This time, in macOS Utilities, please choose Install macOS and then hit Continue. Hit Continue again to confirm the operation. When you see the license terms, hit the Agree option. You may need to do this twice for confirmation. Choose Macintosh HD (or however you renamed your local hard drive) and hit Install.

Wait for the installation to complete. This may take up to an hour or more depending on your system configuration and other factors.

Frequently Ask Questions

There are several known issues when installing macOS Catalina on ansupported Mac. However, it has less impact on daily usage.

No Tab for All Photos in Photos App. You will find this minor issue when using Photos app on Catalina. To fix this, you should right click any photo in Photos app and select 'Show in All Photos' from pop-up menu.

GPU acceleration not available. You will see a performance downgrade when playing games because the full video accleration is not available in Radeon HD 5xxx or 6xxx series video card.

WiFi not working. If you could not join any WiFi network, then you should use this command to fix it manually: sudo networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 SSID PASSWORD

Summary

Definitely, it is not a simple task to install macOS Catalina on an unsupported Mac. You have to complete the task manually, which is more challenging than a direct update being pushed by Apple official. However, the above tutorial proves to be fine on most of unsupported Macs we listed in Section 3. Now, enjoy using macOS Catalina on an officially unsupported device!

Apple updates its macOS (previously Mac OS X) desktop and laptop operating system once a year, like clockwork, bringing new features and improvements. That’s all very well, but Apple’s most recent version of macOS – Big Sur – won’t run on any Mac older than 2013, and in some cases 2014. Which may well mean that your Mac can’t officially be updated – unless you follow this tutorial.

Before you go ahead and follow the advice below a word of warning: there is a reason why Apple chooses not to support the new Mac operating system on older Macs. Older Macs just don’t have the necessary components or power required to cope with the demands of the more modern systems. So if you do install Big Sur, Catalina, or any recent version of macOS on an unsupported Mac don’t expect it to run smoothly.

Is my Mac too old to update?

We have a macOS compatibility checker here, so you can see which versions of macOS your Mac should be able to run.

Here’s an overview of the Macs that will run Big Sur, according to Apple:

• MacBook models from early 2015 or later
• MacBook Air models from 2013 or later
• MacBook Pro models from 2013 or later
• Mac mini models from 2014 or later
• iMac models from 2014 or later
• iMac Pro (all models)
• Mac Pro models from 2013 or later

Apple advises that macOS Catalina will run on the following Macs:

• MacBook models from early 2015 or later
• MacBook Air models from mid-2012 or later
• MacBook Pro models from mid-2012 or later
• Mac mini models from late 2012 or later
• iMac models from late 2012 or later
• iMac Pro (all models)
• Mac Pro models from late 2013

Apple advises that macOS Mojave will run on the following Macs:

• Mac models from 2012 or later
• iMac Pro (from 2017)
• MacBook models from 2015 or later
• MacBook Pro models from 2012 or later
• MacBook Air models from 2012 or later
• Mac mini models from 2012 or later
• Mac Pro models from late 2013 (plus mid-2010 and mid-2012 models with recommended Metal-capable GPU)

The older macOS High Sierra had a little more scope. Apple said that would run happily on a late 2009 or later MacBook or iMac, or a 2010 or later MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini or Mac Pro.

If you Mac is supported read: How to update to Big Sur.

This means that if your Mac is older than 2012 it won’t officially be able to run Catalina or Mojave. In the case of Catalina that includes all the old-style Mac Pro models, pre-‘trash can’. If you want to run , but your Mac is older than 2013/2014, the new macOS just isn’t for you, as far as Apple is concerned anyway.

However, despite this it is possible to run newer macOS versions on older Macs thanks to a patcher.

Don’t expect things to be plain sailing though – in fact you should expect to encounter problems. Be prepared for the fact that your Mac will not function optimally and you could lose data. (For that reason we recommend doing a full backup of your Mac first).

Mac Os Download For Windows

For example, many older Macs have problems with the Wi-Fi connection after installing macOS Big Sur. If you need Wi-Fi, installing the preview version is not advisable.

Running Big Sur on another macOS on an unsupported Mac may also be considered against Apple’s terms and conditions. For information about Apple’s terms and conditions read: Should you agree to Apple’s terms and conditions.

Wondering if it’s worth updating your Mac? Read: macOS Big Sur vs Catalina.

How to install Big Sur on an unsupported Mac

If your Mac is more than a few years old and you try to install Big Sur on it you will hit a few hurdles – the first being the fact that Software Update simply won’t let you install the new version of macOS.

However, this doesn’t mean that installing Big Sur on an older Mac isn’t possible. It is – you just need a patch. Luckily there’s a patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on older Macs available – the big-sur-micropatcher can be downloaded from GitHub.

Note that macOS patchers cannot perform magic and not all Macs will be compatible. Before installing Big Sur on an older Mac, make sure that your Mac is compatible with the patcher. On the patch page (linked above) you will find some notes indicating the various years of manufacture. Before you upgrade to macOS Big Sur review the compatibility notes.

The procedure for updating to a new version of macOS on incompatible Macs is as follows:

1. First you will need to obtain the installation files for the operating system. You’ll have to obtain these using a compatible Mac. If they don’t show up in Software Update you can get the installation files from the Mac App Store.
2. Now you need to load these installation files onto a USB stick and prepare the USB stick for installing macOS Big Sur. We explain how to create a bootable installer of macOS in a separate article.
3. Next you need to obtain software that is able to trick the installation files of the version of macOS you want to install into believing that the Mac is compatible. You can download that patcher we mentioned above from GitHub. Click on the Code and Download Zip buttons.
4. After extracting the archive from your download you will find the file “micropatcher.sh”.
5. Open a terminal window and drag and drop the file into the terminal. Then run the command.
6. Now install macOS from your bootable installer.
7. In some cases, there are still tasks to be performed after the installation. These can be found in the instructions for big-sur-micropatcher. After preparing the Mac with the USB stick, start a terminal and enter “/ Volumes / Image Volume / set-vars.sh”. The script is part of the patch for macOS Big Sur and changes important settings for booting and system files.

The update can take several hours. In our case it sometimes looked like the installer had crashed during the update. In this case you should wait, as the installation is usually still in progress. Over time, better ways to update a machine may be found. Currently, the safest approach is to update using a bootable USB stick.

How to install Big Sur updates on an unsupported Mac

Upgrade Unsupported Mac

Once you have installed macOS Big Sur, updates will appear in Software Updates as soon as they are available. 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.

These steps were translated from an article by our colleagues at Macwelt.

How to run Catalina on an older Mac

You can download a macOS Catalina Patcher from a developer known as DOSDude1. The patch will enable you to install Catalina on an older Mac.

The Catalina hack doesn’t work with every Mac, but many are covered. You can see if your Mac is supported here.

DODDude1 offers a video tutorial on his website, here. We’ve simplified the steps below, but we recommend that you follow his tutorial.

1. Download the latest version of the Catalina patch here. (You can make a donation).
2. Open the Catalina Patcher app.
3. Click Continue.
4. Choose Download a Copy.
5. The download (of Catalina) will start – since it’s almost 8GB it is likely to take a while.
6. Plug in a flash drive.
7. Choose ‘Create a bootable installer’ from the options.
8. Plug the bootable installer into the Mac you wish to update.
9. Restart the Mac while holding the Option/Alt key. This will cause the Mac open in Startup Manager.
10. Choose the bootable installer drive and Enter.
11. Now your Mac should open in Recovery.
12. Choose Reinstall macOS and wait for the new version of macOS to install.
13. After the installation has completed, you should restart the Mac in Recovery mode again, choosing the drive that contains the bootable installer.
14. Now choose macOS Post Install and the required patches will be installed on your Mac so that Catalina can work.
15. When the patches have been applied choose Force Cache Rebuild.
16. Restart.
17. When it reboots, your Mac should now boot into a fully working copy of macOS Catalina.

Mac Os X Install Disk

If you are running a version of macOS that predates High Sierra or Mojave, you will need to format your hard drive to APFS.

We have more advice about installing macOS via a Bootable Installer here.

Install Mac Os Vmware

How to run Mojave on an older Mac

As with Catalina, a patch tool was written DOSDude1 that enables you to install macOS Mojave on an older Mac.

You can download the Mojave Patch Tool here.

Install Macos Mojave On Unsupported Mac

How to run High Sierra and older on an older Mac

Install Unsupported Mac Os Downloads

DOSDude1 wrote a similar patch for High Sierra and prior to that Sierra. With the patch installed you can go back as far as early 2008 models. It’s unlikely to run like a dream, which is why Apple advises against this course of action. But you should be able to achieve tolerable performance.

Why you shouldn’t install new macOS on an old Mac

We’d advise tech beginners against attempting this workaround: it calls for a moderate degree of tech expertise.

Remember that we’re going against Apple’s official advice on this one, which means that if something goes wrong – and that’s always a possibility with an OS install, even if you’re using official software – your warranty is unlikely to save you. Of course, it’s unlikely that your 2008 Mac would be under any warranty so that may not worry you too much.

Back up your Mac before going any further. And bear in mind two more caveats.

At some point Apple may patch this hack and prevent it working in future. So if you’re keen, and happy that the risks and difficulties are worth it for you, then jump in while you still can.

Otherwise, you might want to read How to sell an old Mac.

We’ve had a look at what’s coming in Big Sur – here’s our verdict: macOS Big Sur: should you update your Mac?