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macOS Tahoe 26 on Unsupported Macs Discussion

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jshayya0184

jshayya0184

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 8, 2022
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macOS Tahoe is officially the last macOS to support Intel Macs, as confirmed by Apple. This will be quite a long thread, I'm sure. The official minimum requirements are as follows:
Screen Shot 2025-06-11 at 11.53.57 AM.png

Current state: See post #258: The devs have initial patches for many Macs already, but non-Metal macs will not be able to run Liquid Glass, so old "blurs" will be used instead.
There's also a new Tahoe branch on the OCLP GitHub, as well as an issue opened by @dhinakg.
I don't recommend using this new nightly, for it's still very early.
Macs with very promising initial patches (not available to the public, tested only by the devs):
2017 MacBook Pro 15-inch
Mid 2010 MacBook (no liquid glass)
Mid 2015 MacBook Pro 15-inch
Early 2015 MacBook Air 11-inch
Early 2011 MacBook Pro 15-inch
Mid 2012 MacBook Pro 15-inch

Macs tested by the community with decent results (no patches):

MacBook Pro 4,1 (2008, 17" Core2Duo, 8600M GT GPU)
MacBook Pro 8,2 (2011, i7, iGPU) / note: due to USB 2 issue no mouse/kbd input yet
Mac Pro 3,1 (2008, single CPU or 2nd CPU disabled by OC EFI, Nvidia Kepler based GPUs)
Mac Pro 4,1 (2009, flashed to 5,1, Nvidia Kepler based GPUs)
Mac Pro 5,1 (2010, Nvidia Kepler based GPUs)
 
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Ah the T2 being required is a challenge I hadn't thought of before. Could this mean none of the pre-T2 Macs will be able to run it?
 
OCLP managed to patch their way through the T1 chip, but IIRC they only finished patching T1 issues earlier this year while the first T1s (Late 2016) were cut from Ventura back in 2022. That was almost three years for R&D.

Probably easier to disable a software check for missing hardware than to bypass working hardware checking software, but this may take a long while.
 
padams35 said:
OCLP managed to patch their way through the T1 chip, but IIRC they only finished patching T1 issues earlier this year while the first T1s (Late 2016) were cut from Ventura back in 2022. That was almost three years for R&D.
Click to expand...
Good to know. I suspect the challenge this year will be getting it to run on non-T2 Macs. Macs like the 2018 Mac mini and 2020 MacBook Air with T2 should be easier I'd think.

Although, if MacOS can still run in a VM environment with no T2, maybe not. Someone please confirm!
 
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redheeler said:
Good to know. I suspect the challenge this year will be getting it to run on non-T2 Macs. Macs like the 2018 Mac mini and 2020 MacBook Air with T2 should be easier I'd think.

Although, if MacOS can still run in a VM environment with no T2, maybe not. Someone please confirm!
Click to expand...
I'm planning on downloading the beta tomorrow, and testing it both in a VM, and natively on my 7,2 MBA. I'll report back once I do.
 
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I just learned of the new MacOS and am interested in seeing if this will install cleanly onto my 2017 12-inch i7 MacBook. I plan to give this a try using the current version of OCLP and see what happens. I will report my findings once done . . .
 
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Just tried booting the Tahoe installer natively on my 2017 Air, and I'm met with this error:
1000022348.jpg
 
Installer boot for Tahoe successful on MP5,1 (stick prepared with MrMacintosh pkg, extracted to install.app and treated with OCLP 2.4.0 to write to USB stick.

Needs intermediate step USB 3 card though while booting from it.

Sequence: Boot OC EFI, select USB stick installer, boot verbose and wait for "waiting for boot volume" error or crossed halt icon appears. Then unplug USB stick from USB 2 and reconnect on the fly to USB 3.
Booting resumes (!) and after a while the install menu appears (or the missing mouse/kbd blink sequece - then replug the mouse / kbd also to USB 3).

Needless to say: Result of the installation will be at least dubious and no current patches are expected to work any miracle ;-)

Update: 2nd boot/install stage now running, leaving "17min. to complete"

Update2: Setup assistant fired up with blue blurry Tahoe wallpaper. Cannot set new user due to crash and restart.
Tried to migrate a previous user instead, now crashes during reboot phase to complete migration.

...so close to the Finder now - almost in reach ;-)
Will try this on a i7 machine. Suspect heavy usage of AVX 2 commands somewhere on the process!
 

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MacBookPro11,3, with a USB flash drive installer with macOS 26 Tahoe Developer Beta 1 and OCLP 2.4.0: initially it boots from the flash drive, with a normal progress bar, but then suddenly stops at a prohibited sign (a circle with a line across it); so it is currently impossible to do a clean install: maybe it is because this Intel Mac lacks the T2 chip…?
 
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… In the meantime, macOS 26 Tahoe Developer Beta 1 works perfectly as a virtual machine on Apple Silicon; here, in Parallels Desktop 20.3.2, on an M3 MacBook Air:

macOS26TahoeParallelsDesktop.jpeg


kb.parallels.com

KB Parallels: Installing macOS Tahoe virtual machine on a Mac running Sequoia

However, there are a few extra steps to be taken to accommodate for the changes between macOS's so that the virtual machine can run on a Sequoia host.
kb.parallels.com kb.parallels.com
 
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Sven G said:
MacBookPro11,3, with a USB flash drive installer with macOS 26 Tahoe Developer Beta 1 and OCLP 2.4.0: initially it boots from the flash drive, with a normal progress bar, but then suddenly stops at a prohibited sign (a circle with a line across it); so it is currently impossible to do a clean install: maybe it is because this Intel Mac lacks the T2 chip…?
Click to expand...
Something similar on my MBP 9,1.
 
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API Metal 4 will be a challenge as mentioned

Waiting for the work of the OCLP team, if it runs well on the Macbook Pro 15" 2017 I will be happy, as it will end Intel support in style
 
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