A python program for building and booting OpenCore on legacy Macs, see Supported SMBIOS on whether your model is supported. Designed around Big Sur support, however can be used on older OSes.
| Support Entry | Supported OSes | Description | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| HostOS | macOS 10.9 - macOS 11 | Refers to OSes where running OpenCore-Patcher.app are supported | Supports 10.7+ if Python 3.6 or higher is manually installed, simply run the OpenCore-Patcher.command located in the repo |
| TargetOS | macOS 11 | Refers to OSes that can be patched to run with OpenCore | May support 10.4 and newer (in a potentially broken state). No support provided. |
Supported features:
- System Integrity Protection, FileVault 2, .im4m Secure Boot and Vaulting
- Native OTA OS DELTA updates on all Macs
- Recovery OS, Safe Mode and Single-user Mode booting
- Zero firmware patching required (ie. APFS ROM patching)
- GPU Switching on MacBook Pro models (2012 and newer)
Note: Only clean-installs and upgrades are supported, installs already patched with other patchers, such as Patched Sur or bigmac, cannot be used due to broken file integrity with APFS snapshots and SIP.
- You can however reinstall macOS with this patcher and retain your original data
Note 2: Currently OpenCore Legacy Patcher officially supports patching to run macOS 11, Big Sur installs. For older OSes, OpenCore may function however support is currently not provided from Dortania.
For Mojave and Catalina support, we recommend the use of dosdude1's patchers
See the online guide on how:
Since this patcher tricks macOS into thinking you're running a newer Mac, certain functionality may be broken:
- Boot Camp Assistant.app
- We recommend running the assistant on a natively supported OS, running via the patcher may result in unforeseen issues
- Legacy Windows Booting
- Currently OpenCore cannot boot MBR-based installs, so Ivy Bridge and older Machines may not be able to see Windows in OpenCore's Boot Picker
- Solution is to convert install to UEFI, see MacRumors thread for more examples: Installing Windows 10
- Boot Buddy support
- Due to how OpenCore overwrites NVRAM, the usage of Boot Buddy and such tools are highly in-advised
To get aid with the patcher, we recommend joining the Unsupported Mac Discord Server and heading over to our #opencore-patcher channel. We're actively there and is the quickest way to receive help. For bigger issues such as patcher crashing on build and such, we recommend opening an issue right here on GitHub:
Regarding how to debug OpenCore Patcher, we recommend seeing the below:
To help support this patcher, we recommend checking this page: