If you’re tired of seeing your old Mac gathering dust in a corner because it can’t run the latest versions of macOS anymore, well, I have good news for you.
It’s a tool called OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OCLP) that is here to give a second youth to our faithful aluminum companions! Thanks to the OpenCore bootloader and a whole bunch of kernel kexts and patches, OCLP allows you to install and run macOS Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, and even the brand new Sonoma version on Macs that are officially no longer supported by Apple, up to the models released in 2007! That’s it.
But that’s not all, in addition to allowing you to take advantage of the latest macOS features such as Sidecar, Universal Control, or AirPlay to Mac, OpenCore also restores support for a lot of hardware that Apple has abandoned over the years, such as old graphics cards or old Wi-Fi chipsets.
Of course, not everything is rosy either, and depending on the model, there are some limitations, especially in terms of graphics performance with the Metal API, which is not supported everywhere. But overall, the user experience remains very good once OCLP is installed.
The great strength of OpenCore Legacy Patcher is that, unlike previous patching tools like DOSDude1 or Patched Sur, it doesn’t need to change the system installed on the disk. Instead, it injects its changes on the fly during startup, which allows you to keep a “vanilla” macOS system and continue to receive updates from Apple directly from System Preferences, just like on an officially supported Mac.
And all without fiddling with the firmware or disabling protections like SIP, that’s classy! Obviously, a recent Mac will always do better than an old cuckoo clock, but for all those who can’t afford to change machines every 4 mornings, OCLP is a great solution to continue enjoying your Mac for as long as possible.
Of course, none of this would be possible without the great community of passionate developers and tinkerers who gravitate around the project. So I take my hat off to them for their crazy job. And also to Apple for macOS, huh, don’t mess around ^^ either.
After that, be careful, installing an unsupported OS is always a bit of a headache and requires a minimum of technical knowledge. So if you’re not sure, do your homework before you start. The project documentation is very complete, and in case of any problems, the community on the OCLP Discord will surely be able to help you out.
Well, it’s not all that, but I think I’m going to take out my old MacBook Pro from 2005, I just hope the battery hasn’t bitten too much!
