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macOS 13 Ventura on Unsupported Macs Thread

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
0xCUBE

0xCUBE

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Jun 6, 2022
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Planet Earth
This thread will be dedicated to the discussion of running macOS 13.0 on Unsupported Macs


Welcome to the new macOS Ventura on Unsupported Macs thread! We're eagerly awaiting for all our community developers and enthusiasts to test out the new version of macOS. Please play it by ear and only experiment with the new OS if you really know what you're doing.

We will be expanding this thread with much more information as the day goes by including known issues as well as patcher support.

macOS Ventura Compatibility

  • MacBook Air (2018 and Later)
    • MacBookAir8,x
    • MacBookAir9,x
  • MacBook Pro (2017 and Later)
    • MacBookPro14,x
    • MacBookPro15,x
    • MacBookPro16,x
  • MacBook (2017 and Later)
    • MacBook10,1
  • Mac Mini (2018 and Later)
    • MacMini8,1
  • iMac (2017 and Later)
    • iMac18,x
    • iMac19,x
    • iMac20,x
  • iMac Pro (2017 and Later)
    • iMacPro1,1
  • Mac Pro (2019)
    • MacPro7,1
* Note: List does not include Apple Silicon Macs

Not officially supported in macOS Ventura, but most likely fully capable of running it
  • 2015/17 MacBook Air
    • MacBookAir7,x
  • 2015/16 MacBook Pro
    • MacBookPro11,4-5
    • MacBookPro12,1
    • MacBookPro13,x
  • 2016 MacBook
    • MacBook9,1
  • 2014 Mac Mini
    • Macmini7,1
  • 2015 iMac
    • iMac16,x
    • iMac17,1
  • 2013 Mac Pro
    • MacPro6,1

Not officially supported in macOS Ventura, but currently not or only partly capable of running it
  • Machines without AVX2 support will no longer boot without workaround**
    • If you're unsure whether or not your Mac supports AVX2, type in this command into Terminal sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu.leaf7_features | grep -o AVX2. Getting AVX2 printed out it means your system has a (decent) chance to run Ventura in future.
    • UPDATE: A workaround has been found: Using the Rosetta 2 x64 emulation library from Apple Silicon Ventura installations, all intel processors from Core 2 Duo (Penryn) on can successfully boot the current macos 13.0 beta
  • Devices with Ivy Bridge CPUs and older, basically all Macs older than Late 2013 do not support AVX2 natively. See above.
  • Support of these systems would require an opcode emulator to work around it, a complex piece of software. See workaround above. Meanwhile partial support has been achieved by identification and patching of software using AVX2 code. But this patching is not a perfectly working solution.
  • GPU drivers from before Kaby Lake (Intel) or Polaris (AMD) are removed. Graphics drivers have been patched on all metal-supported (basically post-2012) GPUs. See this post for details. Nevertheless especially Nvidia Kepler and HD4000 based systems (Metal 1) cause a log of problems and will likely not be able to enjoy the full feature-set as systems with Metal 2 dGPU. Currently features like face recognition in the foto app does not work.
  • Even if you can boot, you might not have GPU acceleration, just frame buffer at most. Can be circumvented by applying alpha acceleration patches on metal-supported GPUs
  • Non-metal GPUs have absolutely no support for graphics acceleration (see #998) Nevertheless applications support remains broken as more and more Apple and third party apps are relying on the metal framework. Maps, Photos, Word are just a few to be named. No fix ever!
Developers will investigate re-adding support. No guarantees and no time line. Ventura updates will certainly break support again and again and will need a continuous observation and re-engineering or patches. Please check the current issues yourself.

Owners of older Macs are used to the procedure...
  • Just check the first post of the macOS 12 Monterey on Unsupported Macs thread
The Monterey thread/post already covers how to download the Apple installer packages and why and how it is limited to end users by Apple (Beta program), it mentions the state-of-the-art patcher (OCLP) and explains everything else worth knowing right now. Since there isn't even basic support for Ventura right now, please jump onto this train only if you have a fair amount of developing or troubleshooting skills.

Get used the reading the first post of this thread again and again, it is the most valuable source of information. It will be updated constantly.

This is not the OCLP support llist!

This is an unconfirmed list of machines Apple dropped, but that have managed to boot Ventura
(regardless of the patches/method required to enable them, * denotes GPU metal API patch support with appropriate GPUs, whereas + indicates non-metal acceleration patch support):

MacPro3,1 *
MacPro4,1 *
MacPro5,1 *

iMac13,1 (21.5") *
iMac14,1 (21.5") *
iMac14,3 (21.5") *
iMac15,1 (5k) *
iMac16,2 (21.5") *
iMac17,1 (5k) *

MacMini4,1
MacMini5,1
MacMini6,1 *
MacMini6,2 *
MacMini7,1 *

MacBookAir2,1
MacBookAir3,2 +
MacBookAir4,2 (13") +
MacBookAir5,x *
MacBookAir6,1 (11") *
MacBookAir7,x *

MacBook4,1
MacBook5,1 +
MacBook5,2
MacBook6,1
MacBook7,1
MacBook8,1 *
MacBook9,1 *

MacBookPro4,1 (15" and 17") +
MacBookPro5,x
MacBookPro6,1 (17") +
MacBookPro7,1 (13")
MacBookPro8,x
MacBookPro9,2 *
MacBookPro10,1 *
MacBookPro11,1 *
MacBookPro13,3 *

...to be continued!

Even using a supported metal GPU on pre Haswell systems fails because the AMD driver stack (AMDRadeonX4000GLDriver.bundle) now uses AVX2 instructions. AVX2 use will not be limited to the kernel and drivers. You may check this link about the current situation.

For all of who have installed Ventura on any supported/unsupported devices you may use this method to check for AVX2 instructions hidden in any executables or libs. Unfortunately is is not that easy to access binaries from the kernel extensions any longer since they are not stored on disk but hidden in a big cache.

Please mention @0xCUBE in a post if a different Mac that is not on this list is confirmed to boot.

To avoid frustration or even worse data loss please create and maintain backups on a regular basis. Before performing a major and even bevor doing a minor macOS update create a new backup.

Do not swim ahead of the swarm of macOS users, you have an unsupported Mac, neither Apple nor the OCLP developer team will recover your system. If you nevertheless believe installing beta software with development patchers on unsupported Macs nobody can or will help you. Follow the swarm. Observe posts and read about new problems and do not ask if is is safe - it is not!

Look up Apple support pages how to manage and create multiple parallel macOS installations using APFS volumes. Keep the latest working macOS and create test environments with new test users before messing with your single working Mac. A lot of problems are related to incompatible settings inherited in a decade of macOS updates and from incompatible third party software.

All hardware still supported with Monterey but dropped from Ventura support will get Apple software and firmware updates until late summer 2024. To apply those (valuable and often necessary firmware) updates you need to install and update Monterey on your system. All firmware upgrades are bundled into the supported macOS Monterey updates, only. Ventura will not provide those firmware updates, since your Mac is not supported by Apple with Ventura!

The most easy way to achieve this is having an APFS container (aka volume) in parallel with your new Ventura installation. No user data needs to be copied in there. Just boot Monterey when you get an Monterey update notification and apply this update.

Note that when booting a supported OS to get firmware updates it must not be booted via OpenCore. Press alt/option on boot and do a PRAM reset before booting back into Monterey.

You may drop (delete) this basic Monterey installation after Apple stopped delivering new updates in autumn 2024. You will not get new firmware releases.

(If you read this section after 2024 just prepare your unsupported system by installing once the latest Monterey version released by Apple including all updates to get the latest firmware update installed. You may drop this Monterey installation after this procedure.)

Another method to update the firmware has been described on this site. It requires some system admin technical skills.

Bad news:

TM (time machine) restoring and MA (migration assistant) is broken on root patched systems. Do not try, system will only arrive in an unbootable and uncorrectable state after hours of restoring or transferring data.

There are two ways around this:

1. Use the OCLP USB installer and install Ventura on top of your current (supported or unsupported) macOS. This will retain your current user data. But create a final TM backup before leaving your supported macOS installation, it will be the only return ticket.

2. Simply use MA or TM before system has been root patched by the OCLP app. This is sometimes difficult to achieve when auto-patching ran before you even reached the login page. You can prevent auto-patching by creating an USB installer manually (createinstallmedia and install OpenCore manually).

After many requests, we've finally opened up a way for people to make monetary contributions to OCLP's development, using Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/opencore-legacy-patcher If you appreciate what we do, please considering donating! Your support will help us purchase needed hardware to improve the project. Thanks!

To revert back to the last supported (by Apple) macOS version you must erase your disk as there is no uninstall option provided by Apple and there is not way around this. You should follow Apple supported methods to get back, but create a user data backup before starting to erase the internal disk!

A lot of known issues exist, do not expect fixes and please do not even ask for fixes - this constant noise only ruins motivation of all people involved into this project.

A complete step by step guide is available in the OCLP documentation. Please read this documentation before you start the installation process. Please understand only USB installer based installations are supported.

Support is limited to legacy Apple systems only as listed within the docs.

Please keep the USB installer, it is a simple recovery tool in case your shiny new Ventura installation breaks for some reason.

OCLP gets regularly updates, please check those updates by reading the release notes and the full changelog.

This will be great!
 
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Will be interesting to see the official list. Strange that it wasn't hinted at during the stream or in the press release.
Edit:
Screen Shot 2022-06-06 at 12.54.38 PM.png

Yeah thanks for dropping my 5K iMac Apple... Wish we could have just one chill year like back in the days of Mavericks through El Capitan.
 
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Thankfully it doesn't look too different from Monterey so I bet it'll work on the same Macs after reinserting the kexts Apple has removed. :)
Edit 22 oct: Looks like I was really wrong at first but thankfully the devs have proven themselves :)
 
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My older 2015 iMac is no longer on the supported list. Haven't been in the unsupported Mac realm since 2015 when I had a 2006 iMac so it will be interesting to see how much the tools have changed since ML/MacPostFactor and the Yosemite tools!
 
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techguy9 said:
My older 2015 iMac is no longer on the supported list. Haven't been in the unsupported Mac realm since 2015 when I had a 2006 iMac so it will be interesting to see how much the tools have changed since ML/MacPostFactor and the Yosemite tools!
Click to expand...
I played with OpenCore to install Monterey on a 2013 21.5" iMac. It works well enough to be usable but not 100% without issues.
 
redheeler said:
I played with OpenCore to install Monterey on a 2013 21.5" iMac. It works well enough to be usable but not 100% without issues.
Click to expand...
What are some of the issues you've experienced? My 2012 Mini has zero issues that I've noticed compared to a natively supported Mac. SIP being partially disabled could be considered an issue though
 
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Heindijs said:
What are some of the issues you've experienced? My 2012 Mini has zero issues that I've noticed compared to a natively supported Mac. SIP being partially disabled could be considered an issue though
Click to expand...
Mostly with sleep/wake. For some reason the iMac will randomly wake and the LCD won't go back off. Waking from sleep also presents a bootpicker-like interface before it goes to the lock screen which I thought was strange. Earlier there were some minor UI pixel glitches but those were resolved with the last Monterey update.
 
oldmacs said:
Oh for goodness sake Apple. Yet another year of aggressive dropping of Macs. They were still selling the 2017 MacBook Air under 3 years ago!
Click to expand...
I agree the 2017 is a five year old device and they want to cut it off. Also the 2017 iMac with the 2.3 GHZ i5 is still supported and the pro with the same processor so it makes no since that they cut off the 2017 MacBook air.
 
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redheeler said:
Mostly with sleep/wake. For some reason the iMac will randomly wake and the LCD won't go back off. Waking from sleep also presents a bootpicker-like interface before it goes to the lock screen which I thought was strange. Earlier there were some minor UI subpixel glitches but those were resolved with the last Monterey update.
Click to expand...
Oh that's an interesting quirk. It may have already been resolved by now since I've read something on the changelogs for OCLP recently regarding sleep wake issues but I could be wrong.
My Mini had weird glitchy UI issues before 12.3 as well but it wasn't OCLP's fault. Even natively supported Macs with Intel graphics had those issues. Luckily it's now all smooth for me :)
 
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