What's going on, everybody?
It's Anson here, and I'm back with an update on installing macOS
Sonoma on unsupported Macs. I'm going to show you how to update your
system as Apple software updates come out. And I'm also going to answer
some questions and provide some clarity based on the
comments on my initial video. So first of all, on my 2013 MacBook
Pro, Sonoma has been running great. I haven't used it as my
primary computer, but I have been doing some audio
and video production with it. In fact, the audio that
you're listening to right now is being recorded on this
computer via screen flow. So no issues there. One of my viewers, Kurawang,
brought up a good point. After you finish installing Sonoma on
an unsupported Mac, you want to go into the OpenCore Legacy Patcher and make
sure that you run any post install updates. This will make sure that all
of your drivers are up to date. So for those of you that are having
issues after installing Sonoma with your displays flickering, things
running slowly, this should help you out. I actually did it in my original
video, but it was really fast. And I didn't speak to it very well. So thank you for bringing
this to my attention, Kurawang. Steve Corcoran also
brought up a good point. When you're creating your initial installer to
install Sonoma on an unsupported Mac, you want to make sure that you're creating that installer on
the computer that you're going to install Sonoma on. You can actually create it on a different
computer, a more modern computer. But for it to work, you have to modify
some settings in OpenCore Legacy Patcher. So it's just easier to create it on the
computer that you're going to use it on. That is an absolutely great tip. Thanks, Steve, for
bringing that up as well. Now, according to the OpenCore Legacy Patcher
documentation and some other users for doing incremental updates on your unsupported Mac,
you can just go into your system settings. And then you can go to
the general section and then click on software
update and run your updates. Make sure that you
run any of the post install patches like I talked about
after you do that update. But sometimes an update
fails or just isn't available. In fact, when I went to update this
computer, I didn't have the option available. So I had to figure out
another way to do that. And then during the update, it
actually failed midway through. So stay tuned to see what I
did and how I fixed the problem. But I will say it can be quite brutal. The total time that it took me to
run this update was 43 minutes. And that is when everything goes well. Yeah, I know. Insane, right? Here's the time breakdown for
updating my 2013 MacBook Pro. Downloading, validating and extracting
the installer took seven minutes. Putting the installer on a
flash drive took 11 minutes. And then actually installing
Sonoma took about 25 minutes. But regardless, I told you
I'd show you how to do it. So here we go. First of all, make sure that you're installing any
OpenCore Patcher updates that pop up while you're using your computer or when you open up the OpenCore
Legacy Patcher from the applications folder. And then follow the
prompts to start root patching. This makes sure that
you have the latest version of OpenCore
Legacy Patcher installed. Install it to the EFI disk. Then with OpenCore Legacy Patcher
open, click create macOS installer. Choose the latest version
of Sonoma or whatever OS you want to update
to and then click download. It will download, validate
and extract, which took a total time of
seven minutes for me. Then it asks if you want to
finish creating an installer. Go ahead and plug a 16 gigabyte or
larger USB drive into your computer. Keep in mind that this process will erase
everything currently on the USB drive. I just used the same USB that I
used for the initial Sonoma install. With the USB drive plugged in, click yes. Select the installer
you just downloaded and then select the
USB drive from the list. Confirm that everything will
be erased on the USB drive. Enter your password
and then let it do its thing. This step took about 11 minutes for me. When it finishes, it will
ask if you want to install OpenCore to the disk, click
yes and then install to disk. Choose the flash drive from
the list and be careful here. Make sure you're
choosing the flash drive and not a time machine backup
or something like that. Choose the EFI volume, enter your password
and then reboot to apply the changes. On the reboot, hold down
the option key so that you get a list of bootable drives to appear
when your computer comes up. Use the arrow keys to select
the EFI boot option and hit enter. Then select install macOS Sonoma. In the window that pops up,
again, select install macOS Sonoma. Hit continue, agree and
then select the computer hard drive that you want to update
Sonoma on and hit continue. This part of the install took
about 25 minutes for me but I had to do some
troubleshooting to work it all out. So after this initial install,
my computer restarted about three times and on the third
time, it actually got stuck. So I decided to reboot to
safe mode. So I pressed and I held the power button
until my computer shut down and then I held the option
key to bring it back up. I selected the EFI boot drive
and then while holding the shift key to boot into safe mode, I
selected my Macintosh hard drive. It went through an odd loading
screen, rebooted and came right up. So once you get here, select
the required settings and log in. Then check to make sure that
you're running the Sonoma version or whatever OS version
that you were trying to install. You should get a pop
up that asks if you want to install open core to the
disk and you absolutely do. This will make it so that
you can boot your computer without having to use the
flash drive every single time. So click OK on the pop up and
then on the next screen, click install to disk and then select your actual
Macintosh HD, not the flash drive. And then choose the EFI volume.
Enter your password and reboot. Eject your flash drive and
you should be good to go. Remember to check for
any post install updates like I talked about at the
beginning of the video. I will note it took a couple of
reboots in order for my computer to restart without me manually
having to select the startup drive. So just be aware of that and maybe
restart your computer a few times after you finish this process to make sure that
everything is all set and ready to go. So there you have it. That's how you can
update an unsupported Mac OS install, even when you're not seeing updates available by going
to the Apple menu and then software updates. And when you're receiving the stuck
loading bar when trying to install updates. In fact, one viewer,
Knight 157 asked, wouldn't it be simpler
just to put Linux on it? Then you wouldn't have
to go through those big updates every time a
point release came out. And you know, Knight 157, after going through this
entire update process, I am seriously thinking about doing that at some point in the future,
especially since I've always wanted a good Linux setup. So everybody, let me
know in the comments section what your
thoughts are regarding that. If you happen to get completely locked out of your
Mac while doing this update, you might want to take a look at this video right here, where I go over every
single Mac OS hard disk troubleshooting technique. If you found the video that
you're watching right now helpful, I would really appreciate a
thumbs up here on YouTube. And if you want to see more
Mac tutorials or wild and crazy tech adventures, don't forget to
subscribe to the YouTube channel. I'm Anson Alexander and I
will see you in the next one.
