Opencore Legacy Patcher is saving millions of Macs from going to landfills.
This sounds like a pretty hefty claim, but It’s actually the reality. But what is OCLP and how do I use it? That’s what I’m going to talk about in this weeks post.
Table of Contents:
What is Opencore Legacy Patcher (OCLP)?
You just have to give credit to Apple. They support their devices for a long time. But sometimes, their decisions just make no sense. Some Macs should be absolutely capable of running newer versions of macOS, but Apple just decides to give you a subtle “fuck you” when trying to get the latest versions of macOS on your older device.
Especially now, where Apple is pushing more and more towards their M-Chip-equipped devices, it’s just a matter of time until the last Intel Mac looses official support.
You might have noticed that little word “official” there. Because this is where Opencore Legacy Patcher comes in.
OCLP (as I’ll call it from now on) is a small but very powerful piece of software, that enables the installation of newer macOS versions on “unsupported” hardware.
OpenCore is a sophisticated boot loader used to inject and patch data in memory, instead of on disk. This means that you’re able to achieve a near-native experience on many unsupported Macs.
This includes “near native” OTA Updates, requiring just a few extra steps, Hardware Acceleration, AirDrop, Apple Watch Unlock, Sidecar, and much more.
How do I use OpenCore Legacy Patcher?
The process is very simple.
First, you should see if your hardware is supported. Yes. This might sound weird, but even OCLP is unable to support some older devices. But since this mainly talks about Power-PC Macs and very early Intel Macs, most devices are fully supported and are able to run up to macOS 15.
To see what hardware is supported, you can use the official hardware compatibility list: OCLP Supported Models
To get started, head over to the GitHub repository and download the latest release of OCLP: OCLP GitHub
After downloading, launch the Application downloaded.
You’ll now see a simple UI that shows a bunch of information.
For everything in this Guide, I used my early 2015 MacBook Pro, for which I have a fully dedicated post planned, where I talk about the experience of running macOS 15.2 on that hardware. If you’re interested in that, feel free to bookmark my page and follow me on X to not miss the release of that.
The UI you see is the “home” of OCLP. It lists the model of Mac you’re currently running (which will become important when using a different Mac for creating your installer) and all the necessary options to create a bootable installer.
To get started with our installer you’ll need to create a macOS installer. This can be done by choosing the button.
Here you’ll be asked, if you’d like to use an existing installer (if you already downloaded one to your mac) or if you’d like to download a fresh one straight from Apple’s servers.
After downloading or choosing your installer, you’ll choose where to create the installer. This should be your USB-Drive with at least 16GBs (I actually recommend 32GBs since most newer installers are already bigger than that…). So just go ahead and select it.
The creation of the installer will take some time, so sit back and relax.
After the creation is done, we go over to building and installing OpenCore.
Here’s one important thing:
If you are planning to use your installer on the Mac you are using to create it, you can just follow the dialouge that opens after creation is complete.
If you are creating this installer for another Mac, you have to select the SMBIOS for that model in settings. You can find the model codes on everymac.com or by googling.
If everything looks right, you can go ahead and build OpenCore. As soon as that’s done, select your USB-Drive’s EFI Partition.
When you’re done with that, it’s time to boot into your installer.
To do that, you have to press “Option” on boot and select “EFI-Boot”. In EFI-Boot, select your installer by choosing the option with “Install macOS [Version]”.
For now the process of installing is just like any other macOS Installation.
When your installation is complete, OCLP should have installed itself to your system and should ask you to install OpenCore to your local EFI, so you can boot without an USB-Drive. Just follow the instructions and let the “Root Patches” run.
This enables Hardware-Accelleration and all that nice stuff.
After that, you can enjoy your “not supported” macOS version on your old hardware.
My experience with OCLP
I used OCLP on a multitude of devices up until now.
This included many iMacs from 2011 to 2013, some Mac mini’s from 2012 to 2015 and a MacBook Pro from 2015.
The usage of OCLP it self is great. Easy to work with and working great on almost any device. The larger problem is mostly with macOS itself, since newer OSs need more power and some older devices simply cant provide that.
But as I said, that’s not OCLP’s fault.
Conclusion
So if you happen to have an older Mac around, give OCLP a try. It helps keeping Macs from the landfills. And if you have a Mac that still supports HDD upgrades, think about swapping that old rusty HDD for a shiny new SSD. That together with OCLP gives that Mac a few more years.
