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INSTALL MACOS MONTEREY ON UNSUPPORTED MODELS

Posted on 29/10/2021 by jensd

macOS Monterey was released a few days ago. Just as with most new releases of
macOS, also for macOS Monterey, Apple decided to remove official support for
some of the older Mac hardware. In general anything older than a 2015 model is
no longer supported. This doesn’t necessarily mean that those Mac models cannot
handle the new operation system, in most cases it would run it just fine.
Luckily, if you want to, there are always ways to get around these restrictions.
In this article, I will describe step by step how to install macOS Monterey on
officially unsupported models by using OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

YOUTUBE VIDEO

If you are interested, I also created a YouTube video from this blogpost. If you
prefer classic text, you can just follow the rest of this article:

INTRODUCTION

In an earlier post, I described how to install the predecessor of Monterey, Big
Sur, on unsupported models. I used MicroPatcher for that article and mentioned
BigMac there as well. For this article, I will go for a different method and I
will use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to get around the hardware checks.

In contrast to MicroPatcher, this method uses an unmodified macOS installer.
Instead, it tricks the installer in thinking it is running on a newer,
supported, model.

SUPPORTED MODELS

You can find a comprehensive list of models on which OpenCore is supported over
here: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html

The minimum OS version installed needs to be 10.9 (Mavericks)

For hardware without Metal support, using a patch, the following should work:

* MacBook5,1 (Late 2008) and later
* MacBookAir2,1 (Late 2018) and later
* MacBookPro4,1 (Early 2008) and later
* Macmini3,1 (Early 2009) and later
* iMac8,1 (Early 2008) and later
* MacPro3,1 (Early 2008) and later

With Metal support, everything newer than the following is fine:

* MacBook8,1 (Mid-2015) and later
* MacbookAir6,1 (Mid-2012) and later
* MacBookPro9,1 (Mid-2012) and later
* Macmini6,1 (Late 2012) and later
* iMac13,1 (Late 2012) and later
* MacPro4,1 (Early 2009) and later (with Metal GPU)

OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS

For the article, I will be using a Late 2013 iMac with model identifier
iMac14,2. My model has the highest specced CPU: an i7 4771, a 256GB SSD, 16GB
RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4 GB. This is interesting as support
for NVIDIA GPUs has been mainly removed in Monterey. It was running macOS
Catalina as a starting point, which is the last officially supported release on
this model.

The steps we need to go through are the following. These need to be executed on
the device where you would like to install Monterey.

1. Download the Install macOS Monterey app without using the App Store
2. Create a bootable USB drive for macOS Monterey
3. Build and install OpenCore on the USB drive
4. Boot from the USB drive and install macOS Monterey
5. Install OpenCore on the SSD/hard drive
6. Optionally install patches (mainly for non-Metal or non-supported GPUs like
my NVIDIA card)

STEP 1) DOWNLOAD THE INSTALL MACOS MONTEREY APP WITHOUT USING THE APP STORE

The first step in this whole process, is to get our hands on the installer. As
the device which we want to get Monterey on is officially not supported, the
installer for Monterey will not be shown in the App Store on this device. So we
need to find another way to get our hands on InstallAssistant.pkg for Monterey.

Mr. Macintosh keeps a list with versions and links to directly download the
InstallAssistant.pkg file. You can find this here:
https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-12-monterey-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/:

At the time of writing, the latest and release version was 12.0.1 (build 21A559)
and I used the following link to download the package from Apple:
https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/39/60/002-23774-A_KNETE2LDIN/4ll6ahj3st7jhqfzzjt1bjp1nhwl4p4zx7/InstallAssistant.pkg

Once you have downloaded the .pkg, you can double-click on it and run through
the dialogs to install “Install macOS Monterey” to your Applications folder:

In case you would encounter issues due to any hardware checks (I did not
experience any on my iMac), you can also manually extract the .app from the .pkg
and move the .app to your Applications folder. You can use the following command
in terminal for that.

jensd@jensds-iMac ~ % cd Downloads
jensd@jensds-iMac Downloads % pkgutil --expand-full InstallAssistant.pkg monterey/
jensd@jensds-iMac Downloads % mv monterey/Payload/Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app /Applications/

If this went well, you should now have the Install macOS Monterey application in
your Applications folder. This is what we need for the next step:

Running this just like on an unsupported model, like mine, won’t work as you
will get a “The update cannot be installed on this computer” during the
installation:

STEP 2) CREATE A BOOTABLE USB DRIVE FOR MACOS MONTEREY

Now that we have the installer downloaded and ready, we will use it in this step
to create a bootable Monterey installation USB.

First we need to prepare the USB drive to make sure we can boot from it and
patch it with OpenCore in the next steps. To do so, insert the USB drive and
open Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, click to show All devices:

Then, in the left column, select your USB drive and click Erase on the top menu.
Now give the drive a name, I chose 32GBUSB, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
and GUID Partition Map as scheme and click Erase:

When this is done, we can use the installer to prepare the USB and get files on
it. Open a terminal window and execute the following command:

jensd@jensds-iMac ~ % sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/32GBUSB
Password:
Ready to start.
To continue we need to erase the volume at /Volumes/32GBUSB.
If you wish to continue type (Y) then press return: y
Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%
Making disk bootable...
Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... 100%
Install media now available at "/Volumes/Install macOS Monterey"

This can take some time, depending on the speed of your USB drive. In case you
called your drive different when erasing it within Disk Utility, you will need
to adapt this in the command here.

At this point, we have a standard bootable USB drive for installing Monterey.
This one could be actually be used now to install Monterey on supported
hardware.

STEP 3) BUILD AND INSTALL OPENCORE ON THE USB DRIVE

From here we start with the steps that are needed to overcome the fact that our
hardware is no longer officially supported. We will use OpenCore Legacy Patcher
for that.

OpenCore is a bootloader that is often used for Hacintosh builds but it runs on
real Apple hardware just fine as well. OpenCore patches or changes some data in
memory, making the software think it is running on newer hardware and by this
bypasses any restriction.

To start with this, we first need to download the latest version, which can be
found here: https://github.com/dortania/Opencore-Legacy-Patcher/releases

As you can see, there is a graphical version (OpenCore-Patcher-GUI.app.zip), an
offline text-based version (OpenCore-Patcher-TUI-Offline.app.zip) and a text
version (OpenCore-Patcher-TUI-Offline.zip). That last one, the regular text
version, will do just fine.

After downloading OpenCore-Patcher-TUI.app.zip, extract it by clicking on it in
Finder and open the application. You should see a terminal window now with
several options:

We need to start with option 1) Build OpenCore:

This shouldn’t take very long. As you can see in the output, this has built
OpenCore specifically for the Mac model which we are working on (iMac14,2 in my
case).

Press Enter to go back to the main menu and now choose option 2) Install
OpenCore. After entering this option, select your USB drive from the list (disk3
in my case):

In the next screen, select the only EFI partition which exists on that drive:

This will install the OpenCore bootloader to the EFI partition on the USB drive.
In a later stage, we will repeat this process but for the internal drive in our
Mac.

STEP 4) BOOT FROM THE USB DRIVE AND INSTALL MACOS MONTEREY

BOOT OPENCORE AND LAUNCH THE INSTALLATION

The USB drive is fully prepared in the previous three steps. Now it is time to
boot the Mac from the USB drive in order to install Monterey. To do so, reboot
your Mac and hold down the Option key during boot time.

Holding down the Option key brings up the bootloader. In there, you should see
the currently installed system (named Catalina in my case), an entry to install
Monterey and an EFI boot entry with the OpenCore logo. The last two are on our
USB drive.

From here, the standard bootloader, we can’t start the installation as we need
to do this from OpenCore to hide the real system identifier. Instead, select the
EFI boot entry using the arrow keys and press enter:

This brings you in OpenCore, which looks very similar to the standard
bootloader. THe only difference is the text at the right bottom corner. From
here you can now choose the “Install macOS Monterey” option:

This will launch the installer from the USB drive, which can take some time.
Once you arrived in the installer, you should see something like this:

PREPARE YOUR INTERNAL SSD/HD FOR THE INSTALLATION

At this point we need to decided where we will install Monterey:

1. Fresh install: remove the existing installed system, and give the full drive
to Monterey
2. Dual boot: add a new Volume and resize the existing one(s) to keep your
current macOS and add Monterey
3. Upgrade: upgrade your existing installation

For the first two, we need to launch Disk Utility first from the menu as we need
to prepare our drive. In Disk Utility, first click on the button to show All
devices:

For option 1, to go for a single OS and do a fresh install of Monterey, click
your drive (internal SSD/HD) on the left side and click Erase. Give your drive a
name (I chose Monterey), choose APFS as Format and GUID as scheme:

For option 2, to add Monterey together with your current macOS install, click
your drive (internal SSD/HD) on the left side and click Partition. Click the
plus sign here to add a partition and choose to add a partition rather than a
volume.

You can change the size on the left side, name the volume (I chose Monterey) and
choose APFS as format:

As soon as Disk Utility is ready with the operations on the drive, we are good
to move to the next step.

INSTALL MONTEREY

Now that our disk is prepare, or you decided to upgrade the existing install,
you can start the installation from the menu:

Click Continue, accept the license agreement and select the volume on which you
want to install Monterey. Here you need to select:

1. Fresh install: the only internal volume you see here (called Monterey in my
example)
2. Dual boot: the volume which you added during the partition part (called
Monterey in my example)
3. Upgrade: select the volume which you want to upgrade (called Catalina in my
case)

From here on, you can relax and sit back as the installation can take quite some
time. If all goes well, you should see the following screen after a series of
reboots:

Navigate through the questions, which differ depending on which type of install
you decided to go for. You can notice in some cases that everything is pretty
slow. This is due to the lack of video card drivers or Metal support. which we
will fix in step 6.

If all goes well, you should end up on the desktop of your newly installed macOS
Monterey system:

STEP 5) INSTALL OPENCORE ON THE SSD/HARD DRIVE

So far we have successfully installed Monterey on our Mac. But to start it, we
still need to boot from the USB drive as that is where OpenCore is currently
installed. In order to fix this, we need to install OpenCore to the internal
HD/SSD instead.

This goes in the same way as we did in step 3) for the USB drive. We first need
to download the latest version of the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, which can still
be found here: https://github.com/dortania/Opencore-Legacy-Patcher/releases

Again, download OpenCore-Patcher-TUI.app.zip, extract it by clicking on it in
Finder and open the application. In the terminal window, we again need to start
with option 1) Build OpenCore:

Once complete, go back to the main menu and now choose option 2) Install
OpenCore. Here we now need to select our internal drive (SSD or HD) instead of
the USB drive:

In the next step, select the EFI partition on it:

Just as in step 3, this will install the OpenCore bootloader to the EFI
partition, allowing the official bootloader to boot from it:

At this point it is safe to eject and remove your USB drive. In case you have a
fully supported (AMD-based) graphical card, you should be done here and you can
do a reboot to test if everything still works.

In some cases it might be needed to boot holding the Option key, then select
OpenCore.

STEP 6) OPTIONALLY INSTALL PATCHES

If the model of Mac which you are using doesn’t have a Metal-supported card or
you are having one of the NVIDIA-based models where Apple decided to remove
support for, you need to go through this additional step.

In this step, we will install some patches ion the system that will either add
graphics acceleration for non-Metal card or fix the driver issues for others.

Re-launch the downloaded OpenCore legacy patcher, which you downloaded in the
previous step. Now choose for option 3) Post-Install Volume Patch:

Then select 1) Patch System Volume:

Depending on which patch is needed for your system, a selection will be made and
applied after confirmation.

After going through this, perform a reboot and you should be done. In some cases
it might be needed to boot holding the Option key, then select OpenCore.

PERFORMANCE

As I wanted to check if there would be any performance impact after upgrading to
Monterey, I did a Geekbench 5 test on my system while it was still on Catalina:

These were the results for my iMac while being on the last supported OS:
Catalina:

And the same test after upgrading to Monterey:

Strange to see that the single core score is lower but the important one,
Multi-Core, is slightly higher so definitely not worse.

In general the system feels very snappy and I don’t really notice any
performance loss in comparison with Catalina.

Hope this post will help you to extend the life of your beloved Apple Mac :)

This entry was posted in Apple, macOS by jensd. Bookmark the permalink.

86 THOUGHTS ON “INSTALL MACOS MONTEREY ON UNSUPPORTED MODELS”

1. Natalia Farre on 03/11/2021 at 12:27 said:

Hi Jens!
Thanks for your explanation. I’m thinking to do a Fresh install ( MacMini
6.1) in that case, I don’t really need a extra patch for graphics, isn’t it
?
I understand that With Metal support, everything newer than the following
is fine – includes mine (MacMini6.1) at this moment it’s Capitan installed.
So, can you confirm me please? For be sure.
After that, any update of Monterey will work? or it’s better OFF updates?
Thanks for your time

Reply ↓
* jensd on 05/11/2021 at 10:51 said:

I think a patch is also needed for the Intel HD graphics in your Mac
Mini, which should be HD 4000 (Ivy Bridge).
It works in the same way to apply them. Updates should be fine but maybe
better to wait a few days after they get released to see if it won’t
cause issues.

Reply ↓
* Natalia on 06/11/2021 at 22:50 said:

Thanks Jensd!
I’m Capitan right now… I’ll do a fresh install of Catalina because I
saw that have a new format (not Mac OS register) and then go forward a
new fresh install of Monterey. It’s the best option? or I have to
install first Big sur?…
I mean … Catalina, then Big sur .. and later Monterey.

Reply ↓
* jensd on 07/11/2021 at 09:26 said:

For a fresh install, you can just go immediately for Monterey. No
need to do this for each version.

Reply ↓

* Gasman on 04/01/2022 at 07:28 said:

Hi, thanks for the great tutorial. Everything was pretty much straight
forward up to installing Monterey from the bootable USB. The installation
starts, but is then halted with the error message: “The Operation
Couldn’t Be Completed. Permission Denied.”

Any idea how to fix this?

Mac Mini 6,2 Running OS X Catalina 10.15.7

Reply ↓
* jensd on 04/01/2022 at 22:33 said:

Make sure you selected the whole USB-drive (use show all devices in
Disk Utility) and Erase the USB Drive using GUID as scheme.
You could also check if you see the USB-drive as bootable using the
Startup Disk utility and force it to boot from it over there as well.

Reply ↓

2. Abanoub on 05/11/2021 at 20:20 said:

when i opened the opencore again to install it on the internal hard drive
it gave me error about /var/ path of folder that it’s not exist, can you
tell em why that happened plz?

Reply ↓

3. Jorge M on 05/11/2021 at 23:07 said:

Hello Jens,

Thanks so much for the effort for this excellent step-by-step guide, its
completely clear and easy to follow. I have all the tools mentioned in the
guide but I have not yet proceed to install anything on my MA mid 2013
(currently with Catalina) as I have some questions:

1. I plan to have install Monterey on a 128 GB USB drive which I have
currently partitioned it to allocate both the installer, and the OS, so, if
I follow the procedure, will this allow me to chose the specific partition
in my USB drive? (That is, Step 5) Install OpenCore on the SSD/hard drive).
I don’t want to neither update nor make a clean install it as I want to
test this new MacOS first.
2. After installing OpenCore in my USB flash drive, can I undone the
installation if I format the drive or it will be permanently be modified?
3. After installing the new OS, what about the needed security and regular
Apple software updates? For what I read in other forums, no OTA will be
possible using this method on unsupported macs; I guess I could download
them manually. Can you confirm please?

Kind regards

Reply ↓
* jensd on 07/11/2021 at 09:28 said:

1) Should work in theory but I didn’t try that yet
2) After formatting/erasing the drive, all will be back to normal. The
patcher just changes files in the EFI partition.
3) Updates should be coming in but it might be good to wait a few days to
accept them and see if others got them tested first.

Reply ↓

4. Pingback: Install macOS Monterey on unsupported models - DZTECHNO

5. adi on 06/11/2021 at 23:33 said:

It didn’t work on a Retina 15-inch Late 2013 macbook pro

Reply ↓
* jensd on 07/11/2021 at 09:25 said:

What exactly didn’t work?

Reply ↓
* Mike on 22/11/2021 at 04:04 said:

I have the same issue with adi.
I followed the steps until step 4th
the situation are:
1. Install completed, but MacBook Pro cannot enter the login screen
2. I can hear the “Voice over” instructions, but the screen also in the
boot process.
3. I can follow the “Voice over” to set up whole OOBE settings and
enter to the desktop while the screen still in the boot process. like
fullscreen snapshot cover the real desktop.
4. Every keyboard and mouse event are executed well

I think the hole process is perfect but at the end of it, I just cannot
enter the desktop. What should I do.
Thanks
My MacBook Pro is A1398 15′,1TB, 16GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB GDDR5

Reply ↓
* jensd on 22/11/2021 at 08:35 said:

Not sure what is happening. You have nothing on the screen? Or there
is something over it?
Was this a fresh install or upgrade?

Reply ↓
* Mike on 23/11/2021 at 08:35 said:

Yes, It’s a fresh install.
There is a Apple icon and a process bar running about 20% on the
screen when I hear the “voice over” instructions.
And process bar is freeze while I finish whole OOBE settings.

Any suggestions?
THANKS Jensd

* Jorge on 08/02/2022 at 20:30 said:

I have the same exact issue? Can you fix it? Thanks in advance!!!
Help please -> @ulisesmathey

* Jorge on 08/02/2022 at 20:31 said:

Sale model. Macbook pro 15” latr 2013. Stuck with the apple logo
and can hear the voice over reading the screen.

* Matt Beyer on 22/11/2021 at 16:43 said:

I have same MacBook Pro as adi and mine hangs upon final boot screen with
the apple logo. the install hangs just before the line gets to the apple
logo and stops there. let it go for two days. have retired many time
still the same out come have the intel iris pro 1536 MB video card

Reply ↓
* Mike on 29/11/2021 at 11:30 said:

I solved this issue. Because of Nvidia graphic card driver is not
Patched.
follow these steps:
1. Restart Macbook with OpenCore-Patcher EFI,
2. Press “Shift” key to safe mode
3. open “OpenCore-Patcher” in usb disk
4. go through 1 Bulid & 3 Post-Install Volume Patch & Patch System
Volume
5. Select your graphic card type, and yes
6. Waiting download drivers almost 100mb. then done
7. reboot with OpenCore-Patcher EFI,
8 Enter Monterey
then Solved

Reply ↓
* Matt Beyer on 01/12/2021 at 02:58 said:

that did it thank you so much !!!!!!!!!

Reply ↓

6. Andrew on 07/11/2021 at 22:13 said:

I did everything on a macbook pro mid 2014 (11.1), it works ok and boots
with the usb drive, no kernels needed. The only problem i’m getting is that
i cannot boot without the usb drive. I tried to install open core to
internal ssd by disabling first verbose and the picker but i get a blank
screen followed by a question mark. When the usb drive is inserted works
perfectly. What could it be? Should i disable filevault?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 08/11/2021 at 15:22 said:

It could be that you will need to boot holding Option first, then
manually select your internal drive.
After you are in macOS, you can configure the startup device using the
Startup Disk Utility.

Reply ↓

7. TI on 08/11/2021 at 00:35 said:

Hi,

Thank you very much for that great manual to get my iMac10.1 Later 2009
running Monterey. That’s a great help to get the system up to date with all
Apps able to preform update (especially MS-Office 365) too. Great stuff!

I followed the instruction step by step without getting any surprises at
all. The preparation and installation was running like shown in your video.

But I have one remark:
If you are running the update on some very outdated iMac like the 2009
Later model, please make sure to use the OFFLINE VERSION of
OpenCoreLegacyPatcher (560MB file). This is a great help, because your
WIFI-Adapter is not working anymore after for installation and first start
of Monterey.

To fix issue this with unsupported WiFi-Adapter, you have to install the
Legacy Patch to get WIFI running again. If you just download ed the online
version of OCLP (32MB), you are not able to perform the patch, because it
demands an existing Internet connection.

PS: a proper workaround is an Ethernet cable connection

Reply ↓
* Mippi on 22/11/2021 at 05:16 said:

Thanks for the tutorial..I did it on my MBP 2010 15inch..
I have little problem..after fully install the monterey, the graphics are
very laggy..
NVidia GeForce GT 320M 256mb..

What should I do ?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 22/11/2021 at 08:35 said:

Did you install the patches after going through the installation?
That should fix the graphics performance.

Reply ↓

8. mr Star on 10/11/2021 at 11:26 said:

The problem hangs on HID: Legacy Shim 2
and the error icon =(

Reply ↓

9. Z on 13/11/2021 at 00:07 said:

How can I do this AND use “BOOTCAMP”? It says create 200mb partition so I
tried. No luck. What now?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 13/11/2021 at 22:48 said:

Didn’t use Bootcamp on Monterey yet but you could create a bootable USB
drive for Windows 10 or 11 and install it without bootcamp.
Did articles on that as well.
– For Windows 10:
https://jensd.be/1349/windows/create-a-bootable-windows-10-installation-usb-on-macos
– For Windows 11:
https://jensd.be/1429/windows/install-windows-11-on-your-mac-without-parallels-or-bootcamp-assistant

Reply ↓
* Adrimaxi on 13/01/2022 at 14:56 said:

I installed win11 with the mentioned tutorial. Nevertheless after
monterey installation, I have a warning that I won’t be able to boot
Windows:
– Found Windows Boot Loader
Would you like to continue installing OpenCore?
Installing OpenCore onto this drive may make Windows unbootable until
OpenCore is removed from the partition
We highly recommend users partition 200MB off their drive with Disk
Utility
Name: OPENCORE
Format: FAT32
Size: 200MB

I created a partition of 1.5 GB named opencore. and try again but I got
the same message… Should I install opencore on this new partition? Many
thanks

Reply ↓

10. Z on 13/11/2021 at 17:15 said:

How can I run macOS Monterey & BOOTCAMP? Also the recovery screen is still
OS X. Even though I am on macOS Monterey. Why?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 13/11/2021 at 22:46 said:

Reply ↓
* Z on 14/11/2021 at 03:21 said:

How to remove Open-Core or make the recovery menu [command+r on boot]
MacOS Monterey? Thanks for the quick reply. I’m on a mid-2012 MacBook
Pro.

Reply ↓

11. Andre van der Lans on 14/11/2021 at 14:33 said:

Your video is very clear and is an excellent guidance.
I am running Big Sur 11.6.1 on MBP 10,1 mid 2012 with 16 gb ram i7 chip and
retina display.
I want to upgrade to Monterey. and do a fresh install.
Therefore my internal ssd will be erased. Question: do I lose all my data
and progs in the process?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 15/11/2021 at 21:09 said:

If you choose for a fresh install, all will be gone. That’s kind of the
reason why one would want to do a fresh install.
In case you want to keep what you have, you can upgrade or do a dual
boot.

Reply ↓

12. Sheela on 20/11/2021 at 14:37 said:

Can i upgrade to this windows 11 on x32 windows 10 with x64 processor.
In the Microsoft Website it is specified that it requires x64 processor not
os.

Kindly reply. I also left an like and subscribed your channel

Reply ↓
* jensd on 21/11/2021 at 08:04 said:

As far as I know there is no upgrade path from a 32 bit Windows 10 to
Windows 11. You can do a fresh install or dual boot though.

Reply ↓

13. Igor on 03/12/2021 at 08:42 said:

Hi Jans,

Thank you for the great tutorial. I managed to update my iMac late 2012.
The only thing I notice is that the graphics are slow. I looked if I can
find the metal support string in System information, but it’s not there.
Should you recommend to run the post install script?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 07/12/2021 at 08:35 said:

Just give it a try. The patcher will check if patches are needed or not.

Reply ↓

14. jdmc on 08/12/2021 at 02:43 said:

Can’t get this to work on my Macmini5,1 (2011). All goes as expected until
the Monterey installer is launched from the OCLP boot-picker. Progress bar
under the Apple logo stalls indefinitely after filling to the 30–50% range.
Repeated reboots, Option-select at boot, clearing NVRAM all haven’t solved
the problem. I even tried it with OCLP and the Big Sur and Catalina
installers; same result. Help?

Reply ↓
* jdmc on 10/12/2021 at 05:28 said:

Turns out the problem was related to using the built-in SD card slot;
somehow it got deactivated during the boot process, thus taking offline
the very installer that was in the process of booting. Attaching the SD
card via an external USB card reader solved the problem. (As the 2011
Mini has only USB 2.0 ports (not 3.0), the install was slow, but it
worked.)

Reply ↓

15. Matt Beyer on 11/12/2021 at 19:01 said:

just updated my macbook pro late 2013 to 12.1.

Reply ↓

16. Marco on 12/12/2021 at 13:36 said:

Hi Everyone,

First of all thanks very much to Jens for this excellent tutorial!

Has anyone tried to install Monterey on an iMac 14,2 with a 3,1 TB Fusion
Drive?

Can the EFI Boot still be installed on either the 128GB SSD or the 3 TB
HardDrive (or both)?

How would you patch the EFI of the Fusion Drive?

Thanks very much for letting me know.

Reply ↓
* jdmc on 13/12/2021 at 21:54 said:

Interesting question! Is this an original-recipe Fusion Drive (created
via CoreStorage and formatted in HFS+), or has it been re-created as an
APFS “Fusion Container”? It’s most likely the former, but I thought I’d
ask anyway.

Reply ↓
* Marco on 14/12/2021 at 17:30 said:

Hi,

Thanks very much for your kind reply.

I have never touched the Fusion Drive apart from the conversion to APFS
when Apple introduced this with one of the upgrades to the related
MacOS X version. So to answer the question: It is actually an ”
Apple_APFS Container”

“diskutil list” shows:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 121.1 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 3.0 TB disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme – +3.1 TB disk2
Physical Stores disk0s2, disk1s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD – Daten 1.7 TB disk2s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 11.0 MB disk2s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 529.0 MB disk2s3
4: APFS Volume VM 1.1 GB disk2s4
5: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 11.2 GB disk2s5

I am a little hesitent to follow your tutorial as I don’t want to
“brick” my iMac. What would happen if I apply the modification to EFI
on disk0 and/or disk1?

Also any experience re. performance on Fusion Drive Systems?

Would I alterntively be OK just using the boot usb stick and boot from
there from now on. Maybe a little inconvenient but would that work?

Thanks very much!!!

Reply ↓

17. Paul87 on 13/12/2021 at 02:36 said:

Amazing tutorial and worked very well. I was also able to install OpenCore
on my harddrive so I do not need a USB drive anymore to start.

The only question I have is now every time I start my Mac, it shows the
boot menu (like if you start with Option button). Can I fix this?

Reply ↓
* jdmc on 13/12/2021 at 21:47 said:

Try holding down the CTRL key, the next time you select your desired boot
volume. That should establish it as the default selection.

Reply ↓

18. neil mcrae on 19/12/2021 at 14:02 said:

Neils-MacBook:~ neil$ sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\
Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/32GUSB
/Applications/Install macOS Monterey.app does not appear to be a valid OS
installer application.

any idea? on el captain.

trying to install on a early macbook 12 2015

Reply ↓
* jensd on 19/12/2021 at 17:43 said:

How did you download the app? What is the size?
I’ve seen this before for an app that was smaller in size than expected
(~20MB instead of ~few GB)

Reply ↓
* Basar on 22/12/2021 at 18:31 said:

Did exactly what is written. Works great on macbook pro 9.2 mid2012.
Great work thank you!
Its just somehow keyboard backlight is not working. I installed patch
as well. Would be very appreciated for a help. Thanks in advance

Reply ↓

* Tony Hill on 23/12/2021 at 11:46 said:

This fixed it for me:

mkdir /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app/Contents/SharedSupport
mv ~/Downloads/monterey/SharedSupport.dmg /Applications/Install\ macOS\
Monterey.app/Contents/SharedSupport/

Reply ↓
* matt on 05/01/2022 at 13:14 said:

Thanks! I used pkgutil to extract the pkg-file and the file
SharedSupport.dmg was missing on my system, too.

Reply ↓

19. Matt Beyer on 20/12/2021 at 00:04 said:

Just an update. on a MacBook Pro late 2013 retina –just installed Monterey
12.2 beta. working great

Reply ↓

20. Basar on 22/12/2021 at 18:48 said:

Did exactly what is written. Works great on macbook pro 9.2 mid2012. Great
work thank you!
Its just somehow keyboard backlight is not working. I installed patch as
well. Would be very appreciated for a help. Thanks in advance

Reply ↓
* Basar on 23/12/2021 at 11:11 said:

UPDATE:

I updated mojave 12.1 and ınstalled optional patches again. Everything
works good.

Reply ↓

21. UncleBad on 24/12/2021 at 18:54 said:

Attempting install on iMac8,1 and using the GUI open core installer. Stuck
in step 4. I always get placed back into the Recovery. I believe the
install worked, but how do I now progress to step 5?

Very well written by the way. I like your style!

Reply ↓

22. magarac on 25/12/2021 at 20:36 said:

Fails at:
Step 4) Boot from the USB drive and install macOS Monterey
“Holding down the Option key brings up the bootloader.’

is there a way to verify:
Step 3) Build and install OpenCore on the USB drive
“This will install the OpenCore bootloader to the EFI partition on the USB
drive.”

System Preferences / StartUp Disk
does not list the USB as bootable option.

Reply ↓

23. Steve on 03/01/2022 at 20:15 said:

Hi,
Many thanks for the detailed and straightforward guide.
Following these instructions – mostly by following your youtube video, I
have successfully installed Monterey on 4 iMacs, as listed below. Here is
my experience with this.

1) iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) 3.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, AMD Radeon HD
6970M 2 GB

This was the first one I did, and all together it took the best part of 4
hours, mostly waiting around for the installer to be written to the USB
stick – because this iMac only has USB2 ports and not the faster USB3, so
it was about 2 hours writing to the USB stick (12gb of data). The
installation also took a long time, but not because there was lots to do,
95% was waiting around.

My top tip for anyone trying this: it’s very important to make sure each
stage completes as per the youtube video. This is in the terminal command
line stuff. It can look like nothing is happening for long periods and
several times I thought it had frozen or actually finished, but it hadn’t.
I just had to keep waiting, especially after 90 minutes of writing to the
usb drive, it seemed to be complete – even after it said “Copying to disk:
… 90%… 100%” it then seemed to be finished, no activity, but it took
another 20+ minutes before saying “Install media now available at
“/Volumes/Install macOS Monterey”
Pay careful attention to the readout on the terminal in the youtube video
and it should be exactly mirrored on your terminal.

When I first booted it up in Monterey it was very slow / unresponsive, as
described in the video. After I installed OpenCore to the internal hard
drive and did the patches and restarted, it was fast and responsive. The
patcher gave me a warning that the graphics might strobe and they did,
rapidly switching colours when I moved the mouse. The patcher told me that
the solution was to install “SwitchResX” or “ResXtreme” (which are little
programs to switch and set the screen resolution) and to set / force the
colours to 1 million (instead of 16 million?) – this is 8 bit verses 10 bit
on the ResXtreme options. I did that and it worked. Not sure how this will
effect the experience.

I’ve installed Garageband (which I couldn’t do with High Sierra –
unsupported) and it runs but stops working when I try to bring up the
virtual instruments for programming – it doesn’t crash, but pops up a
window with this message:
“Unable to Initialise Graphics.
Unable to initialise graphics. This typically happens when running inside
of an unsupported virtual machine environment, or when running on an
unsupported Mac.”

There is an “OK” button to click, which then quits GarageBand.

On the activity monitor, after clicking the CPU Load display the CPU
History window opens showing the individual Core activities. This CPU has 4
cores with another 4 virtual cores. All 8 show up in the CPU history, but
99% of the activity is in the odd numbered cores, the even numbered cores
are barely used. No idea why this is.

2) iMac (27-inch, Late 2013) 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 780M 4GB
3) iMac (27-inch, Late 2013) 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 755M 1GB

I used the same installation USB drive that I created for the first iMac
above, so I didn’t need to spend ages writing the Monterey files, but just
needed to replace the OpenCore files on the USB drive – I followed the
exact same sequence as before – the OpenCore terminal program did
everything automatically, clearing the old files and replacing them with
the new ones. Both these iMacs identify as “iMac14,2” but I repeated the
OpenCore stages for each one separately. Both were slow on initial startup
but were fast after patching etc. There were no problems with the graphics
and GarageBand functions completely.

4) iMac (20-inch, Mid 2009) 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 9400
256MB

Again, same installation drive with updated OpenCore files for this
specific iMac. The installation took a very long time – the installer “time
remaining” numbers should be completely ignored. When it got to the very
end, stating “less than a minute remaining” it stayed like that for half an
hour or more – the feeling that it had crashed or frozen was very strong –
several times I nearly gave up and was tempted to restart via the power
button, but eventually it completed and restarted on its own. Before
installing the patches, it was unable to see any wifi networks, but it was
able to work with a network cable and download the OpenCore file, then
download the patches. It was very sluggish before patching, but afterwards
it picked up a lot, but the performance is slow for everything. Monterey is
running but the iMac is struggling to keep up. Apps take ages to open. With
this iMac and the first one (above), there are residual artefacts with the
graphics – mostly a slight change in the background colour as I move the
mouse pointer around inside system / program menu dropdown windows and
right-click menus.
This iMac has only 4GB of RAM and a mechanical hard drive, but on the
activity monitor it’s the CPU which is maxing out – even just playing a
video on YouTube – and there are many videos it can’t / won’t play.
Installing Monterey on this iMac was really just an experiment and it may
be fine for graphics-lite activities (I will try it further) but it will
probably work and feel better with a Linux OS. Any recommendations?

Reply ↓
* Marco on 13/01/2022 at 19:17 said:

Hi Steve,

had any of your iMacs a fusion drive and if yes how have you installed
the OCLP boot loader on that fusion drive (SSD EFI partition or harddrive
EFI partition or both)?

Or did you use the usb stick to boot?

I would like to install Monterey on my fusion drive over an esiting
Catalina installation. I just cannot find anyone who has successfully
done that. See my question on this page in the above to see the partition
layout.

Thanks very much and kind regards
Marco

Reply ↓
* jensd on 14/01/2022 at 08:36 said:

Unfortunately I don’t have any Mac with a Fusion drive. I do know they
are just logically merged together, not sure how OpenCore handles this.
Should try to get my hands on something with a fusion drive to play
with it a bit more.

Reply ↓

* Steve on 15/01/2022 at 00:55 said:

Hi Marco,
Sorry, none of my iMacs has a fusion drive. My gut instinct would be to
install on which ever drive is listed first / has the lowest number.
Steve

Reply ↓

24. Sebastian on 06/01/2022 at 20:51 said:

Thanks for the good tutorial. Installation worked fine on my MacBook Pro
Retina Mid 2012.

The only annoying i have is that even in standby mode the fan is going
crazy… any known issues about that?

Reply ↓

25. Steve on 08/01/2022 at 18:29 said:

Is there an easy way to uninstall Monterey, to reverse this process? I
installed it on several iMacs (see my previous reply), as dual boots with
the original MacOS (various) I’d like to take one of them back to just the
original OS, and recover the hard drive space and remove all traces of
OCLP.

Reply ↓

26. Matt Beyer on 12/01/2022 at 22:50 said:

Just installed Monterey 12.2 beta 2. still working fine on a late 2013
Macbook pro retina 15 inch

Reply ↓

27. Bruce on 12/01/2022 at 23:17 said:

I just finished the Monterey install It seems to be working except there is
no WiFi and cant even get to internet with ethernet connected

Reply ↓
* jensd on 13/01/2022 at 09:28 said:

You will most likely need to patch the install. This can be done with the
OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Use another machine to download the offline
version and run in on your Monterey-device to fix this.

Reply ↓

28. Tom64 on 13/01/2022 at 22:36 said:

Hi,
thanx for this great tutorial. I planned to install Montery 12.1 on my
MacBook Pro 15 Retina
with Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB graphics
Must i install a patch after the installation?

Reply ↓
* jensd on 14/01/2022 at 08:35 said:

Hard to tell without the exact model number or Intel Iris Pro number. But
you can just run the patch option and it will auto-select patches if they
are needed.

Reply ↓
* Tom64 on 14/01/2022 at 11:28 said:

Thank you, i just installed Monterey 12.1 and all worked perfect
only the Boot Time is very long, but this is no problem

Reply ↓

29. Maor on 14/01/2022 at 16:04 said:

Perfect guide!
Thank you!

Reply ↓

30. Arthur on 15/01/2022 at 16:32 said:

No further comment. Works great on an iMac late 2012. Happy with this.
Thanx.

Reply ↓
* jensd on 16/01/2022 at 22:56 said:

Thanks for the positive feedback. Good to see it helped you :)

Reply ↓

31. Jon on 24/01/2022 at 15:38 said:

Hi I follow your instruction on my mac mini 2012 fusion model, it works
fine except one thing. I could not connect to my bluetooth heaset nc700, is
it a limitation on the bluetooth discovery, Thank you.

Reply ↓
* jensd on 26/01/2022 at 21:00 said:

Did you run the patches from OpenCore?

Reply ↓

32. Danny D on 25/01/2022 at 22:11 said:

Worked great on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) – MacBookPro
11,1!
I had to run the install of OpenCore twice on the hard drive as the first
time it just wouldn’t boot.

Thank you SO much for this. It was ridiculous to have to buy a new Mac to
get this update and I HAD to get it to meet OS security requirements for a
client or I wouldn’t be able access their network after Jan 31.

Reply ↓

33. Levi on 28/01/2022 at 01:30 said:

Hi! thanks for the great write up! everything worked for me, but only issue
i have is, I cant reboot without the USB, I patched opensource after the
restart, and still don’t have the EFI boot option

Reply ↓

34. Oliver Twist on 28/01/2022 at 12:24 said:

Hello,

I have MBP 17” (Mid-2010, MacBookPro6,1) with 2.66-GHz i7 processor and
NVIDA GeForce GT 330M/Intel HD Graphic video cards. I was able to install
Mojave with no issues, but I wasn’t able to install Catalina, Big Sur, and
Monterey thereafter. Boot-ROM Version is 99.0.0.0.0

I kept receiving the dreadful error message: An error occurred loading the
update.

I have tried disabling the SIP, doing the PRMN reset, installing from
Mojave, etc. It is so frustrating when I cannot figure out what triggered
the error message when it doesn’t have any error code or additional
information. I’ve spent a long time researching for the workarounds or
solutions. Yet, many of them didn’t really give me much information on
diagnosing the issue or have found the solutions but couldn’t be replicated
on my MBP.

Please help! Thanks very much!

Reply ↓

35. Matt Beyer on 30/01/2022 at 05:07 said:

Just installed 12.3 beta Monterey on my Macbook Pro 15 inch late 2013
retina working great !!!!

Reply ↓
* Travis Nicely on 31/01/2022 at 19:35 said:

and is your nividia gt750m working?

Reply ↓
* Matt Beyer on 06/02/2022 at 15:29 said:

absolutely

Reply ↓

36. Peter on 01/02/2022 at 10:38 said:

Thanks a lot for your recipe :-)
works great. Did it on a iMac late 2014 with 1TB fusion drive. I take disk0
for EFI boot option. I thought this would be the right deciosion because
the MBR ist on disk0. So far it works great. But in my opinion the fans go
on more often. But I will take an eye on that…

Peter

Reply ↓
* Marco on 06/02/2022 at 10:28 said:

Hi Peter,

that’s good news.

Could you do me a favour and check whether your fusion drive looks
similar to mine:

My “diskutil list” shows:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 121.1 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 3.0 TB disk1s2

So looking at the above, have you been installing the OCLP boot on #1 (1:
EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1) as shown below?

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 121.1 GB disk0s2

Thanks very much and kind regards
Marco

Reply ↓

37. redd on 06/02/2022 at 04:13 said:

When I input the “~ % sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\
Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/…” code
for booting the usb, terminal responds with “-bash: /Users/user: is a
directory”… what am I doing wrong???

Reply ↓
* jensd on 06/02/2022 at 16:15 said:

You need to start the command with sudo only, the entry before is your
prompt (~ refers to your home directory).
So you need to enter sudo /Applications/…

Reply ↓

38. Matt Beyer on 09/02/2022 at 21:13 said:

Just an update. on a MacBook Pro late 2013 retina –just installed Monterey
12.3 beta 2 –working great

Reply ↓

39. Matt Beyer on 17/02/2022 at 02:18 said:

just an update and a warning. i installed the latest Monterey 12.3 beta 3
on my MacBook Pro retina late 2013–beta 2 was fine but the beta 3 wouldn’t
allow me to install the patches–asked for my admin password and always said
it was incorrect soooo started over and back on 12.2.1

Reply ↓
* Matt Beyer on 17/02/2022 at 02:22 said:

oh yah—had the latest open core patch 0.4.2

Reply ↓

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