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.
Insert your desired USB drive, open Disk Utility, and format it as OS X Extended (Journaled). Open the 'macOS Mojave Patcher' tool, and browse for your copy of the macOS Mojave Installer App.Ensure that the tool successfully verifies the app. Jan 15, 2021 But I would rather buy a second generation silicon mac to truly take advantage of the new OS features and remain on Catalina (or HS) for everything else. Or just bootcamp your old unsupported mac to windows 10 as the main OS and macOS as secondary to bring out some of its latent potential to 2021. I could not get it to properly install on imac 9,1. So I began to search. And was I reassured by the dozens of Mac-afficionados already running the macOS Big Sur beta1 on their unsupported MacBooks and Mac Minis. The trick Well then, with all those people already installing the beta on their unsupported Macs, I started to work on it for mine. STEP 2: Download macOS Monterey. The next step is to download macOS Monterey. Normally, you won't be able to get new updates as you're using unsupported Mac and Apple will block updates for new OS. However, there's another workaround available and you can download the copy of macOS Monterey very easily.
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.
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!
macOS Catalina is the most advanced version of the macOS which came in our hands on October 7, 2019. The introduction of Catalina happened in WWDC 2019. The public beta of macOS Catalina was out later on in July 2019. Apple introduced Catalina with fantastic features and amazing wallpapers by describing macOS Catalina, is a fantastic listener and she can understand you better than anyone. Catalina also has a Time-Shifting desktop which turns light into dark or dark into light according to your time zone. Here’s how to Install macOS Catalina on Unsupported Mac.
The profile picture of macOS Catalina is a lovely picture of Santa Catalina Island which changes depending on the time. The night time wallpaper is a picture of a navy blue ocean and dark blue sand mountain and the day time wallpaper is a beautiful picture of light yellow sand mountain which we can’t explain in words. The name of Catalina is taken from the Santa Catalina Island of Los Angeles. But according to some sources, it is taken from a girl’s name in Spanish and which means “Pure”.
macOS Catalina
Catalina’s complete version was down on October 7th, 2019. After Catalina was completely out, there were many new things and as well as many problems. I personally use macOS Catalina and I like it very much and have no problem with it except a little difficult to find things. However, there are lots of features and updates I haven’t still touched off.
With the help of Catalyst, you can use macOS and iPadOS simultaneously. Apple has made so many new updates and features which let us edit my photos and videos like a pro editor. Catalina is loved by so many people and people like to use macOS Catalina not only by Mac users but also by Windows and other operating system users. In this article, I’ll show how to Install macOS Catalina on unsupported Mac.
The latest updates happened in macOS Catalina march 24 2020. Due to this update changes came into Screen Time Communication Limits, a feature first brought to the iPhone in the iOS 13.3 update, it adds iCloud Folder Sharing, and it brings a new Head Pointer Accessibility option that allows the cursor to be controlled with head movements using Mac’s camera. We’ll see how to Install macOS Catalina on Unsupported Mac.
Check If Your Mac is in The Unsupported List
macOS Catalina is excellent but if users can’t use it, then it makes no sense to know it. From while ago, Apple has been cutting and making the compatible Macs list larger for their new versions and this list is also applied to Catalina. As Apple is rolling more versions they are cutting more old Macs from the list. The list of unsupported Mac is getting larger and is already too large. Maybe that’s because Apple wants more users to buy their new products instead of using their old ones.
Since the list of unsupported Macs has increased now some users who run Mojave also can’t install macOS Catalina. According to Apple, they said, we are decreasing the number of Mac supports because old Macs don’t have enough capacity and Metal graphics processors. According to Apple, they said, we are sorry for all the old mac users who can’t experience MacOS Catalina in their Mac. Not everyone can afford to get a new Mac every year and Macs aren’t cheap too. Don’t worry, we are going to show you how to install macOS Catalina on unsupported Macs.
Before heading towards installing macOS Catalina on your Mac, check out the unsupported list of Macs and if your Mac is from the unsupported list. Here are the list of unsupported Mac.
- Early-2008 or newer Mac Pro, iMac, or MacBook Pro:
- MacPro3,1
- MacPro4,1
- MacPro5,1
- iMac8,1
- iMac9,1
- iMac10,x
- iMac11,x (systems with AMD Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Catalina.)
- iMac12,x (systems with AMD Radeon HD 5xxx and 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Catalina.)
- MacBookPro4,1
- MacBookPro5,x
- MacBookPro6,x
- MacBookPro7,x
- MacBookPro8,x
- Late-2008 or newer MacBook Air or Aluminum Unibody MacBook:
- MacBookAir2,1
- MacBookAir3,x
- MacBookAir4,x
- MacBook5,1
- Early-2009 or newer Mac Mini or white MacBook:
- Macmini3,1
- Macmini4,1
- Macmini5,x (systems with AMD Radeon HD 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Catalina.)
- MacBook5,2
- MacBook6,1
- MacBook7,1
- Early-2008 or newer Xserve:
- Xserve2,1
- Xserve3,1
If you’ve checked and found out your Mac is in the unsupported list, step to the next step which is how to install macOS Catalina on unsupported Mac.
What You’ll Need
Before you step ahead, here are what you’ll need for this procedure.
- A 16GB USB Drive
- Backup Mac
Once that’s with you, now dive into how to Install macOS Catalina on Unsupported Mac.
Backup Your Mac
Before installing any operating system, its important to take backup of your computer completely. We recommend backing up your device. Because if anything goes wrong and you hadn’t backed up your device everything will be deleted but if you had backed up your device you can simply restore that. Here are the steps.
First if you want to backup, Time Machine Backup will help you do it without deleting any of your folders.
Connect an external hard disk or a USB with some space.
On the upper left corner of your screen, click on the Apple icon. Go to the dropdown menu and select System Preference.
By clicking on Time Machine you can make a machine which will back up your device.
Choose your backup and click on Backup.
With that done, we’ll start the process and how to Install macOS Catalina on Unsupported Mac.
How to Install macOS Catalina on Unsupported Mac
After checking your Mac, if your Mac is in the unsupported list, you can install macOS Catalina slightly without this tool and steps. If your Mac is unsupported follow the steps below.
Once the tool is there, open it. Click on Continue.
That done, if you’ve the macOS Catalina copy, select Browse for a copy. If you don’t select Download a copy.
macOS Installer App
On this window, click on Start Download.
After it’s completed, insert the USB and click on “Create a Bootable Installer”.
Installation Method
Let the process finish and once it’s done, take out the USB. After a few moments, insert the USB again then reboot the Mac.
When powering on hold the Option key for a while until the startup manager appears. After the Startup Manager opens click on the USB Drive with the help of arrow keys.
In this point, select Disk Utility and click on Continue.
If you have done the previous steps correctly, you are now in the Disk Utility window. To format your internal drive with APFS format, select the drive and click on Erase. When you’re done, close the window.
Erase Disk
Wait for the window and select Reinstall macOS to start the installation.
Unsupported Mac Os
Click Continue with the simple installation wizard and on the install window, select the appropriate disk and click on Install. It might take some while. And you will see many commands going up and down.
Click on the Force Cache Rebuild option and click Restart.
Welcome
By this step, you will see macOS Catalina Setup running on your Mac.
Catalina For Old Macs
After the installation process is done you need to shut down your Mac and insert the USB drive for booting your computer. we are doing this step to verify patches.
Macos High Sierra Unsupported Mac
Now you are completely done with the settings and everything, we have installed the latest version of macOS booted on an unsupported device.
Big Sur For Unsupported Macs
The installation process might be difficult but it is not impossible and even if others say it is impossible we will make possible for you.