I have a 2009 macbook pro 13' with 2 ssd installed inside. One with high sierra and the other with windows 10 and i use the option button to boot between them. My question is there a way to have on the macos ssd to have high sierra and big sur or monterey and still use the option boot screen to pick between the 3 operating systems? If its possible is there a guide that would lead me in the right direction. Thanks
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how many os can a macbook pro have
- Thread starter joeygue
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Yep, should be. The option key doesn't detect physical disks, it detects partitions. So you can install as many MacOS, Linux, or Windows OS's as you want as long as you have enough space and make enough partitions.
When you hold option on boot, they should all show up and you can just select whichever one you'd like to boot into.
When you hold option on boot, they should all show up and you can just select whichever one you'd like to boot into.
My 2008 MacPro3,1 has all the macOS versions from 10.4 to 12 and a few versions of Windows and Ubuntu.
The built-in boot picker (hold option-key at boot) won't be able to boot newer OSs that require OpenCore and it won't let you choose between multiple legacy BIOS OSes (Windows or Linux) from a single disk.
Of course, you can make intermediary booters that can be chosen by the built-in boot picker to boot the stuff that the built-in boot picker cannot. The intermediary booter can be OpenCore (for OSes that require that) or RefindPlus (for OSes that won't boot from OpenCore such as legacy BIOS boot OSes) or something else. You can give each their own icon and name (requires a separate small partition for each, like 100MB - I need to use a HFS+ partition to not be stuck with the "EFI Boot" name)
If you make multiple OpenCore or RefindPlus partitions that boot only one item, then you can change their config to hide their UI.
The built-in boot picker (hold option-key at boot) won't be able to boot newer OSs that require OpenCore and it won't let you choose between multiple legacy BIOS OSes (Windows or Linux) from a single disk.
Of course, you can make intermediary booters that can be chosen by the built-in boot picker to boot the stuff that the built-in boot picker cannot. The intermediary booter can be OpenCore (for OSes that require that) or RefindPlus (for OSes that won't boot from OpenCore such as legacy BIOS boot OSes) or something else. You can give each their own icon and name (requires a separate small partition for each, like 100MB - I need to use a HFS+ partition to not be stuck with the "EFI Boot" name)
If you make multiple OpenCore or RefindPlus partitions that boot only one item, then you can change their config to hide their UI.