How To Know Whether You Can Upgrade to Sierra

If you would like to know whether your Mac can upgrade to the latest version of macOS, there is an easy way to check using Apple's special page on the subject. You can also jump right from that page to the Mac App Store page on Sierra.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: It's incredible how many times I see the question, Can my Mac run Sierra? I see it on forums, discussion boards, Apple site, other sites, everywhere. It's pretty easy to figure this out. Apple has a whole page dedicated just to this. 
Go to this page here you'll come to How to get macOS Sierra. You don't have to remember this URL or even type it. Notice that if I were to copy and paste just the word How to get macOS Sierra in the search bar here it comes up right away as the top result. 
Here is where you can find out all the information. At the top here it says whether or not your Mac can use Sierra. It has all these models of Mac here and you can see it says things like, for instance, MacPro mid 2010 or newer. 
How do you find out what your Mac is? Well if you go to About This Mac up here it tells you like MacPro late 2013. So it uses the same vocabulary here to tell you whether or not you can use Sierra. 
A common question that people have is, well I've got a slightly older Mac but I've upgraded it. I've added more memory, things like that. It doesn't matter. You need these Macs with those processors and chip sets in them in order to run Sierra. You may have a lot of memory but maybe you don't have the correct blue tooth chips or wifi or GPU. All sorts of things. So it's got to be one of these or Sierra simply won't install. 
So if you've determined that your Mac does qualify how do you get to run Sierra. Well you should have gotten a notification. You can see down here below it even gives an example here. A notification saying that it's time to upgrade to Sierra. If you ignored that or maybe didn't remember seeing that you can get instructions right here.
You can go to the App Store. That's where you get it and you can search for Sierra. There's even a link right here on the page to go directly to the purchase page for Sierra. Of course it's free so by purchasing it means to just basically download and getting things going.
The only thing that you need to know is that you need to have, as it says here, at least 2GB of memory and 8.8 G of storage space. Now you almost certainly going to have 2 GB of memory if you have any of these Macs. But it's possible in some of the earlier models here to have less. Also the storage space it's just a matter of having the storage space for you to download the software for it to extract and then install. You don't have to have that leftover when you're done but you need to have it during the installation process.
That's basically all you need to know. Everything else is explained here on that page. If you can get Sierra on your Mac you should be able to get it. The update has been out for a long time now and has all the latest features. So check out this page for more information.

Comments: 6 Responses to “How To Know Whether You Can Upgrade to Sierra”

Barbara passman

8 years ago

About a month ago I got a message saying safari can't find server. Tried unsuccessfully to upgrade to sierra. Xfinity Comcast is our provider.

Gary Rosenzweig

Barbara: Did this error appear when you tried to upgrade to Sierra? Or somewhere else? Did you try again?

Marg B

Gary I am a mature user of my MacBook Pro and full time carer for husband with Parkinsons so not much time to spare to have a huge learning curve. Will I notice a huge difference from 10.11.6 to Sierra? I don't go in for all the fancy things using my computer - I just do very basic things such as email, web searches etc.

Marg: No, I don't think so. Email and web surfing are pretty much the same.

Sylvia Chubbs

My Microsoft suite is 2011. Is this compatible with Sierra?

Sylvia: I don't know for sure, since I am using the latest version of Microsoft Office (I assume that is what you mean). A quick search comes up with lots of people that say it works, but it needs to be up-to-date (version 14.5.6 or later?).
I find it is always best to keep your software up-to-date, though. SO you may want to consider getting the newer version of Office at some point.

Comments Closed.

How To Know Whether You Can Upgrade to Sierra

Comments: 6 Responses to “How To Know Whether You Can Upgrade to Sierra”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information