How to get Catalina on an older Mac. The problem is that, if you’re running an older unsupported machine, macOS Catalina simply won’t be available to download via the App Store. Even if you did manage to get a copy via third-party means, code baked into the install will stop it from running on unsupported hardware, but there is a workaround. The Mojave 10.14.1 update does NOT install properly on unsupported machines, and could result in an unbootable OS. If you want to install the 10.14.1 update (and are not currently running 10.14.1), perform the following steps:. Download the latest version of Mojave Patcher. Download the installer using the Tools menu of Mojave Patcher. Press the power button on your Mac and hold down the option key on the keyboard as soon as you either see the grey startup screen or the bong. If you only have a windows keyboard holding down the “ALT” key has the same effect as holding the option key. DosDude Catalina Patcher is a popular third-party tool that allows users to patch the MacOS Catalina installer on otherwise unsupported Macs. Of course, just because you can do this, doesn't mean. Once you download all files, let's start installing macOS Catalina on your unsupported mac computers. Compatible We strive to push your Mac Model to its limit without compromising its usefulness. Steps to download Mac OS Catalina 10. Enjoy How to install MacOs Catalina on a Unsupported Mac – MacOS 10.
Two Birds With One Stone
So I have this old secondhand MacBook Pro 7, 1 that won’t run MacOS later than 10.13.x. I have some uses for the Mac side, namely in the name of mobility, but would also love to get an install of Kali Linux installed so I can play around with it. I saw a comment on Reddit referencing a tool named “Patcher” that would allow for newer versions of MacOS on older Mac hardware. I immediately went down the rabbit hole and here we are.
Outlined below are the steps I took to get Catalina installed, a custom boot manager installed, and Kali Linux running in a dual boot setup. There are 3 main segments to this:
- Create a bootable Catalina USB installer using Patcher then installing Catalina on my unsupported machine.
- Install a custom boot loader onto my machine.
- Copy a Kali Linux iso to a USB drive, then install it onto my machine.
Patcher – Run Newer MacOS on Unsupported Hardware
Prerequisites – Here’s all you need to get started with Patcher:
- Patcher for Catalina: http://dosdude1.com/catalina/
- An unsupported Mac with a hard drive we can wipe.
- A USB thumb drive larger than 10Gb
Getting this going is super easy as the Patcher app does just about everything for you. USB installer creation can be performed on any machine. Once Patcher was downloaded I performed the following steps:
- Open the Patcher DMG and run macOS Catalina Patcher.app.
- Click Continue until you are prompted to either browse for a copy of Apple’s Catalina installer or download a fresh copy. It is imported to note that at the time of this writing 10.15.4 has been released but Patcher and 10.15.4 isn’t working on most machines. Therefore you should use Patcher’s “Download a Copy” feature to grab a copy of 10.15.3, which works.
- Insert your USB.
- Once Catalina is downloaded click the orange external drive icon to “Create a Bootable Installer”.
- Select your USB drive, then click start.
- Enter your password when prompted to begin.
- Once done your USB drive is ready to rock.
- Plug the USB into your unsupported Mac, hold option to bring up the boot picker, and select the Patcher USB.
- Once booted you’ll be presented with a list of options. Highlight Disk Utility and then click continue.
- We need to leave some space for Kali. Above the left pane click View–>Show All Devices.
- Highlight the internal HDD and then click the partition button.
- Create 2 partitions, an APFS partition for our Catalina install and another for Kali. It is up to you to decide how large you wish these to be. I set the Kali partition to be HFS nut this shouldn’t matter since it will be reformatted when we install Kali.
- Close Disk Utility, highlight reinstall macOS, click Continue, agree to terms, select your newly created APFS volume, then click install.
- Once done reboot back into the Patcher USB.
- Click macOS Post Install
- Leave checkboxes alone and click to install patches.
- Allow system to reboot, then boot back into the Patcher USB.
- While were at it, let’s disable SIP. We’ll need to do this in order to install Kali. Click Utilities on the upper toolbar then disable SIP with the following command:
- Reboot and setup Catalina for your use.
Installing rEFInd – Custom Bootloader
Prerequisites – Here’s all you need to get rEFInd onto your machine:
- Your Mac
- The latest version of rEFInd: https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/
Despite involving some terminal commands this is really quite simple. We’ll mount the EFI volume on the Mac then throw the rEFInd files onto it. It involves a few terminal command but again, quite simple.
- Verify your architecture with the following command:
- You should get something similar to the following:
This indicates 64bit. - Run the following command to verify where the EFI partition lives:
- Take note of the identifier as indicated in the below screenshot:
- Run the following commands to create a directory with which we can mount the EFI volume to, mount it, and create a directory for rEFInd. EFI should be at disk0s1 but if it is different for you then modify the command below appropriately.
- Download rEFInd and unzip it.
- Copy the contents of the refind subdirectory to the refind directory we created in the above command.
- More than likely you are running 64bit EFI. Delete the following to avoid conflicts:
- Delete the following drivers, also to avoid both conflicts and slow boot times:
- Rename refind.conf-sample to refind.conf.
- Now we must bless all things holy in order to boot to our new loader:
- Reboot the machine and you should be presented with the rEFInd bootloader, which should look like this:
Kali Linux – Installation Time
Now that we have our machine prepped we can create a Kali USB installer, boot to it, and install Kali onto our Mac. This part is pretty simple too but you need to be careful when formatting an installation partition, lest you nuke your macOS install. Here’s what you need:
- Your Mac
- Kali iso: https://www.kali.org/downloads/
- A USB thumb drive large enough to house the Kali iso
- Etcher : https://www.balena.io/etcher/
Here’s what I did:
- Open Etcher.
- Select the iso you downloaded, select your USB drive, click “Flash”.
- Plug your Kali USB into your destination Mac and boot it.
- Your USB should show up as:
Boot Legacy OS from whole disk volume - Once booted select “Graphical Install” and proceed with setting up machine name, username, etc.
- When prompted to manage disks/partitions choose “Manual”.
- Select the HFS volume you created earlier and delete the partition.
- This will now show up as free space.
- Go back to Guided Partitioning and select “use the largest continuous free space”.
- Select your desired partitioning schema. I just used the whole partition for all files, nothing fancy.
- Elect to write the changes to disk.
- Kali will now install, I am not sure if Grub is required but I installed it on my HDD when prompted.
- …
- Profit.
I imagine you could do this with any Linux flavor, not just Kali. I haven’t attempted to play around with Debian or CentOS or anything but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for any other Linux distributions.
I’m just a normal sysadmin type guy who likes cybersecurity a lot.
Download Mac Os Catalina From Windows
Apple updates its desktop operating system, macOS, on a yearly basis, introducing new features that further enhance the high-end experience on offer. macOS Catalina introduced Sidecar, a feature that uses your iPad to provide a dual-display experience, alongside Screen Time support, an upgraded Photos app and more, but what if your Mac is too old to get the update?
![Download Catalina On Unsupported Mac Download Catalina On Unsupported Mac](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124849781/367836305.jpg)
While there’s no official way to install macOS Catalina on an older Mac, there are third-party workarounds – we talk you through the best right here.
Is my Mac too old for macOS Catalina?
While you might want to upgrade to macOS Catalina, you might not be able to – it all depends on the model of Mac or MacBook that you have. Much like iOS, Apple only supports recent hardware in macOS Catalina, due to likely performance issues with the power-hungry OS running on older kit.
Here’s a complete list of macOS Catalina-compatible desktops and laptops:
Mac Os Catalina Free Download
- MacBook: early 2015 or later
- MacBook Air: mid-2012 or later
- MacBook Pro: mid-2012 or later
- Mac mini: late 2012 or later
- iMac: late 2012 or later
- iMac Pro: all models
- Mac Pro: late 2013 or later
This means that, essentially, if your kit was released earlier than 2012, you’re out of luck – or are you? While there’s no official way to get macOS Catalina on an older Mac, there’s a techy workaround that’ll get the system running on your older kit – although whether you should or not is a different question altogether.
How to get Catalina on an older Mac
The problem is that, if you’re running an older unsupported machine, macOS Catalina simply won’t be available to download via the App Store. Even if you did manage to get a copy via third-party means, code baked into the install will stop it from running on unsupported hardware, but there is a workaround.
The macOS Catalina Patcher was created by third-party developer DOSDude1, and although you’ll likely run into some problems from time to time, it does allow you to run Catalina on unsupported hardware – even if it does go against Apple’s terms and conditions. Admittedly, the workaround doesn’t work with every Mac, but there’s a large collection listed on dosdude1.com with some going back to early 2008.
There is an in-depth video tutorial on the DOSDude1 website for those interested, but for those in a rush, we’ve simplified the steps right here:
- Download the macOS Catalina Patcher from dosdude1.com.
- Open the Catalina Patcher app.
- Click Continue.
- Click Download a Copy. The macOS Catalina download should then begin, but at around 8GB, it’ll likely take a while depending on your internet speeds.
- Plug in a USB memory stick – we’ve got a roundup of the best USB drives if you’re in need.
- Click Create a bootable installer and wait for the installer to be transferred to your USB drive.
You’ve now created a bootable macOS Catalina installer on your USB stick – next, you need to install it on your older Mac.
- Plug the USB stick into your older Mac.
- Restart your Mac while holding Option/Alt (depending on when it was made) to access Startup Manager.
- Select the bootable installer and click Enter. Your Mac should then open in Recovery mode.
- Click Reinstall macOS and wait for macOS Catalina to be installed on your machine.
- After the installation, restart the Mac in recovery mode and select the bootable drive once again.
- This time, select macOS Post Install. This will install all the third-party patches on your Mac that’ll make Catalina work.
- Once the patches have been installed, select Force Cache Rebuild.
- Restart your Mac.
When your Mac restarts, it should boot into a fully-functioning version of macOS Catalina, ready for you to enjoy.
What Is An Unsupported Mac
To get more out of your Mac, take a look at how to use an iPad as a second display, and how to screen record on a Mac too.