Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's talk about
which versions of macOS that your Mac can run.
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So one of the most frequently asked questions about Macs online is which version of macOS
can your Mac run. If you have an older Mac in particular you may find that you're not running
the most recent version of macOS that you can. The question is which version can you upgrade
to. Maybe you can't go all the way to macOS Big Sur but you know you can go further than the OS
you are already using. I always recommend that you keep your Mac up-to-date. That you use the latest
version of macOS and when a new version comes out you'll update to that. That's how you get the
latest features that you paid for when you bought your Mac. But sometimes life gets in the way and
you don't have time to update and the months go by and soon you find that you're a version or two
behind. Other times you may let the maintenance of your Mac lapse for several months or even years
and then find that you need to jump to the most current version of macOS that you can in order
to run some software that you need. Whatever your reason for wanting to update now the one rule for
all updates is to make sure that your backup is up-to-date. Make sure you're running Time Machine
and that you've just completed a Time Machine backup before you update. If you're not running
Time Machine you've got to STOP everything you're doing and start a backup right now.
Everybody should have a backup going. Those that use their Macs professionally they want to have
more than one backup. A clone or online backup as a second backup. Make sure all your backups
are up-to-date before you do a major system update. But you already know that, right. Good.
Another thing people get confused about is the difference between major updates, like going from
Mojave to Catalina or Catalina to Big Sur, and the system updates that happen in-between. The
in-between updates, the minor updates, you get those when you go to System Preferences and
there's Software Update. You should have things setup here under Advanced to automatically check
for these new updates. So these minor updates are within the major updates. In other words if
you have macOS Big Sur you get several updates within Big Sur. So it goes from Big Sur 11.0
to 11.1 to 11.2 and now we're at 11.4. So these all should happen automatically. If they don't
you can access them under Software Update here in System Preferences.
However, you won't get the major updates here. Software Update won't take you, for instance,
from Catalina to Big Sur. In order to do that you need to get the update in the App Store and you
should get lots of notifications from Apple that it's available and also it's probably going to be
the top thing at the App Store for at least a month after the release of the new macOS.
So what version of macOS can you run. Well, it can be tricky to figure that out.
The first thing you need to do is figure out which Mac you have. Now don't worry about
model numbers or technical specifications or anything like that. The version of macOS you
can run depends on the actual model name and year of your Mac. It doesn't matter which CPU you have,
which DPU you have, how much RAM or disk space you've got. It's the model name and year. In
order to find that out all you need to do is go to the Apple Menu and then About This Mac.
You'll find it right here. In this case I've got a MacPro 2019. That's what you're looking for
when you want to identify your Mac. This one is a MacPro 2019. Here's another example. This
is my M1 MacBook Pro and you could see this is identified as MacBook Pro (13 inch, M1, 2020).
That's the identifier you're looking for. Here is another one. This is for my older MacBook Pro.
So once you know that the next thing to do is to look online. Now Apple has pages for each
version of macOS. All you need to do to find them is do a web search for the name of the operating
system. So let's do macOS Big Sur and then the word compatible. Usually it's the first hit.
Here you could see it's a page at support.apple.com macOS Big Sur is compatible
with. Okay let's go and look at that. This is the official page here. What you find here is a list
of all the Macs that are compatible with this. Sometimes it just shows you a Mac model and then
every year after that. In this case you can look up your exact Mac model by its name,
like that. Then figure out whether or not you can run, in this case,
Big Sur. Here are two of the Macs that I just showed. Let's try the same thing but with Catalina
and here's that same type of page from Apple
and you could see all the models that Catalina will run on.
So unfortunately it's not easy to figure out which version of macOS you could go to because you have
to look at each one of those. You can start with Big Sur and then work backwards and find the most
recent version of macOS that your Mac is listed for. So to make things a little easier I have
compiled a page. I have it here at MacMost. It's MacMost.com/macOS-system-requirements-list.html.
But here's a shortcut to make it easier to get to this page. You could see here at the requirements
list and all of the most recent versions of macOS all the way back to Yosemite are included. Then
even some notes about earlier versions of macOS. So just look through each one and figure out
what is the latest version that your Mac can use. In addition I'm listing
the release date for each one of these and you can also click on the Wikipedia link where
you can find out all about the new features that are in each version of macOS. So if
there is something in particular that you're looking for you have a quick link to that.
Now in most cases you've got a link to the Mac App Store. You can go to the App Store
and find that version of macOS and then get it through the Mac App Store. That's the right way
to update macOS. But if you go back far enough instead of a Mac App Store link
you're going to get a link to a disk image installer that you can download instead.
Now there are two questions that I know I'm going to get from this video. One is
how about if you want to downgrade. How about if you're at Big Sur, Catalina,
or something and you want to go backwards. I don't recommend doing this for anybody. If you've got
old software that you need to go back before Catalina in order to use I recommend updating that
software or finding a replacement. Don't take your entire computer backward just to run that outdated
piece of software. Or if you're sticking to an old version of software it's time to upgrade to the
latest version of that app. You're going to have to upgrade eventually if you're using an old Mac.
One day you're going to have to get a new Mac and that Mac is not going to be able to go to
earlier operating systems. A Mac can only use the operating system that was out when that model came
out or newer. It can't go backwards. So if you're sticking with say Mojave now to run an older app
one day you're going to get a new Mac and you're not going to be able to run that
older app. So you might as well upgrade that app now or move to a different app
while you can and do it on your own terms rather than being forced to do it in the future. If you
do want to downgrade it's a pretty complex operation. There are many ways to do it.
One is to use Time Machine to roll your entire disk back to an earlier time. But
then you might loose files and things like that. It's very tricky. You can also go into a special
recovery mode that's Shift Option Command R when you restart. That will restore the system
not to the current version but to the earliest version that your Mac can use. The one it probably
came with. So you can go way back to something and then upgrade from there to the version that
you want. You can also make a USB Installer but that's complex as well. So chances are
if you have a really good technical reason for wanting to go back to an earlier operating system
you know how to do one of these things. If you don't know how to do one of these things
I definitely don't recommend rolling back to an earlier operating system just because you
don't like something about the new one or you're not used to it yet. It often takes a little time
to get used to some changes. Give yourself the time to learn the latest and greatest of macOS.
Another question I'm going to get is how do you upgrade a Mac that isn't listed in the
requirements list. In other words here with macOS Big Sur maybe you want to use Big Sur
on a MacBook Pro from 2012. So how can you do that? Well, there is a way and it's called using
a micro patcher. It's pretty complex and I would not recommend anybody do it unless you really know
what you're doing. If you've got an older Mac that's not supposed to be compatible with Big
Sur or Catalina or whatever version just stick with the latest version that your Mac can use
if you don't want to get a new Mac. Just continue to use it on the latest version
of the operating system. It's not going to be perfect but neither will running
a version of macOS that isn't compatible with your Mac. That won't be perfect either. At least
stick with the supported route and just use the latest version that's compatible with your Mac.
That's my recommendation anyway. If you've got an older Mac and you want to experiment with it,
if it's your hobby to experiment with computers, then by all means go ahead and try a MicroPatcher
and see what sort of fun you can have. So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.