

pkg, you can double-click on it and run through the dialogs to install “Install macOS Monterey” to your Applications folder: You can find this here: :Īt 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: Macintosh keeps a list with versions and links to directly download the InstallAssistant.pkg file. So we need to find another way to get our hands on InstallAssistant.pkg for Monterey.

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. The first step in this whole process, is to get our hands on the installer. Step 1) Download the Install macOS Monterey app without using the App Store Optionally install patches (mainly for non-Metal or non-supported GPUs like my NVIDIA card).Boot from the USB drive and install macOS Monterey.Build and install OpenCore on the USB drive.Create a bootable USB drive for macOS Monterey.Download the Install macOS Monterey app without using the App Store.

These need to be executed on the device where you would like to install Monterey. The steps we need to go through are the following. It was running macOS Catalina as a starting point, which is the last officially supported release on this model. This is interesting as support for NVIDIA GPUs has been mainly removed in Monterey. My model has the highest specced CPU: an i7 4771, a 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4 GB. MacPro4,1 (Early 2009) and later (with Metal GPU)įor the article, I will be using a Late 2013 iMac with model identifier iMac14,2.With Metal support, everything newer than the following is fine: The minimum OS version installed needs to be 10.9 (Mavericks)įor hardware without Metal support, using a patch, the following should work: You can find a comprehensive list of models on which OpenCore is supported over here: Instead, it tricks the installer in thinking it is running on a newer, supported, model. In contrast to MicroPatcher, this method uses an unmodified macOS installer. For this article, I will go for a different method and I will use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to get around the hardware checks. I used MicroPatcher for that article and mentioned BigMac there as well. In an earlier post, I described how to install the predecessor of Monterey, Big Sur, on unsupported models.
