OpenCore Legacy Patcher
A python program for building and booting OpenCore on legacy Macs, see Supported SMBIOS on whether your model is supported.
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 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 only supports macOS 11, Big Sur installs. For older OSes, please use dosdude1's patchers
How to use
See the online guide on how:
Patcher Warnings
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
- Boot Buddy support
- Due to how OpenCore overwrites NVRAM , the usage of Boot Buddy and such tools are highly in-advised
Support
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: