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Apple macOS Ventura system requirements – can macOS 13 run on your Mac?

Dan Grabham Dan Grabham
The 13 best macOS Ventura features coming to your Mac in 2022

The current version of Apple’s Mac operating system is known as macOS Ventura. It’s a must-download for any modern MacBook, especially the ones found on our best laptops list.

Ventura has been available to download since October 2022. As with all recent releases of macOS (since 2013’s Mavericks if you must know), it’s named after a Californian place – the Southern Californian city of Ventura in this case.

There are a bunch of changes in Ventura, notably the advent of Stage Manager, an alternative tool to Mission Control for organising windows on your desktop as well as enhancements to search in Spotlight, new features in Safari, extra apps and a redesigned Game Center dashboard.

macOS Ventura doesn’t support Macs released before 2017. That includes some pretty powerful Macs that were previously supported by macOS Monterey, such as 2013’s cylindrical Mac Pro (the ‘trashcan’ one) which although hideously expensive at launch is now almost a decade old, of course. Note that this list still supports a bunch of Intel Macs and it’ll be really interesting when Apple decides to drop support for them. Of course, it still sells Intel Macs, so it would feel very premature. But we’d imagine within 3-4 years we’ll be talking about new macOS versions only supporting Apple Silicon hardware, which has now been with us for almost two years.

Here’s a full list of Macs that are supported by macOS Ventura.

macOS Ventura supported Macs: full list

  • 2017 iMac and later
  • 2017 iMac Pro and later
  • 2018 MacBook Air and later
  • 2017 MacBook Pro and later
  • 2019 Mac Pro and later
  • 2018 Mac mini and later
  • 2017 MacBook and later
  • 2022 Mac Studio

macOS Ventura downloads

The macOS Ventura upgrade is available now. As always, remember the mantra for big new software revisions: back up first before you hit that download button.

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home