Old Macs can still get macOS Sonoma with a tool available in October

OpenCore Legacy Patcher

The OpenCore Legacy Patcher won't be offering day-one support for macOS Sonoma on older Macs, with support now expected to arrive on October 2.

Apple released macOS Sonoma on Tuesday, introducing a plethora of new features to Apple Silicon Mac and MacBook models. Users with older Macs expecting to use OpenCore Legacy Patcher will have a bit of a wait on their hands.

OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a bootloader that enables newer macOS releases to work on older Mac models that are not supported by the operating system. It allows unsupported Macs to enjoy the benefits and features of newer macOS releases, by injecting and patching data in memory instead of disk for a near-native user experience.

In a post on X on Monday, OpenCore Legacy Patcher project lead Mykola Grymalyuk gave the OpenCore community an update on the project. There wouldn't be a day-one release of the project that would support, and coincide with, Apple's release of macOS Sonoma.

Patch notes explains that the project now aims for an October 2 release instead. "Due to logistical challenges with receiving hardware for some of our developers, we don't want to rush a release to meet Sonoma," the note states.

"Instead we want to hold out and let them work at a less stressed pace."

Part of the reason is due to planning for Apple to release macOS Sonoma in October, with the note mentioning "Apple has set release a month early compared to the past few releases."

As part of the update, the project will be switching to a "proper major, minor, and bug fix system" for versioning. The October 2 release will be version 1.0.0.

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9 Comments

maasj 11 comments · 2 Years

About 7 months ago

My 2015 MBP lives to see another OS version...

Congratulations to the OCLP team for helping us geeks get more life out of our older computers and delay their arrival at the offshore landfills.

mayfly 385 comments · 1 Year

As my late mom used to say, "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD."

sbdude 265 comments · 5 Years

mayfly said:

As my late mom used to say, "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD."

There's almost no justification on Apple's part, other than laziness, to not support Sonoma on older macs. Ventura is running perfectly fine on macs from 2012, and before. Having installed it myself, afaik, all OCLP does is add the drivers and binaries specific to the graphics cards apple no longer supports, then fools the OS into thinking they are supported. Otherwise, the OS is the same.

rob53 3253 comments · 13 Years

I've tried OpenCore and it simply doesn't work that well on older Macs. New macOS depends on new hardware and when you try and emulate that hardware to get it to run on older Macs, the Mac simply doesn't run that well. I've seen the latest usable macOS running better than using OpenCore with the latest macOS. Sometimes it's just better to run an old Mac with older software.

Ilovelinux 1 comment · 1 Year

I have used MacOS OpenCore with great success. It has worked fine on 2009 to 2015 Macbooks. I've installed Big Sur to Ventura. I will admit Linux distros seem to

work better but the patcher has been fantastic. The problem with using older MacOS versions is that newer software doesn't always work. I'm not saying that you will get the same level of performance with a patched system that you'd get with one that natively supports the new OS but its a godsend on older machines.

However try it for yourself. Its FREE. If you don't like it you can always go back to the old version of MacOS. Just create a bootable USB of the OS you had. Apple is in the business of selling new computers. A machine with 8gb of ram and an SSD can run for many years. The M1 and M2 systems are fantastic and if you use programs like

Final Cut Pro or Photo Shop and need premium performance than buy it. Used units can be found around $500. However if you have an older system around that you aren't using or can find a good used deal, go for it or listen to people who may work for Apple who try and dissuade you.