I have a late 2015 25" Mac running Monterey 12.7.4 A lot of my programs are asking me to upgrade to a newer system, but I understand that Monterey is the latest available OS for my iMac. Is there a way of upgrading my iMac to a later system, I know it is 10 years old, but beginning to get quite slow.
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OS upgrade
- Thread starter N2TCK
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It looks like your Mac is compatible with OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It's an app that allows to run the latest versions of macOS on unsupported Macs.
Basically the app runs you through downloading a macOS installer, putting it on a USB memory stick, then patching that memory stick to allow your unsupported Mac to boot from it and install from it.
I'd recommend you to get an external drive and make regular Time Machine backups (if you don't use one already). I use OCLP on a 2012 Mac mini so I can use it as a file / media / music server. One one occasion it failed to boot after an update, but I was able to restore it from a backup and was back up and running in an hour or two!
From what I can tell you cannot update your current install to a newer version of macOS, so you will need to do a fresh install. I believe however that you can upgrade to newer versions once you are running a patched version of macOS, although I haven't tried upgrading my Mac mini to Sonoma yet.
There are threads on these forums, plus a Discord server where loads of helpful folks can give you advice and help if you need it.
Basically the app runs you through downloading a macOS installer, putting it on a USB memory stick, then patching that memory stick to allow your unsupported Mac to boot from it and install from it.
I'd recommend you to get an external drive and make regular Time Machine backups (if you don't use one already). I use OCLP on a 2012 Mac mini so I can use it as a file / media / music server. One one occasion it failed to boot after an update, but I was able to restore it from a backup and was back up and running in an hour or two!
From what I can tell you cannot update your current install to a newer version of macOS, so you will need to do a fresh install. I believe however that you can upgrade to newer versions once you are running a patched version of macOS, although I haven't tried upgrading my Mac mini to Sonoma yet.
There are threads on these forums, plus a Discord server where loads of helpful folks can give you advice and help if you need it.
I would recommend running whatever version past 12.x on a SSD if your 2015 is running a spinner you're going to have a bad time.. I have 12.7.4 with OCLP running on my 2013 and its a dream. Im booting off a SATA SSD in a TB2 enclosure.