6/16/239:00 am How To Properly Identify Your Mac Model When seeking help for a problem or shopping for accessories for your Mac it can be important to identify the exact model you have and use the proper terminology. You should also be able to identify the version of macOS and the app(s) you are using. You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads). Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can identify exactly which Mac you have, which version of macOS you're running, and the versions of software that you are using as well. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. Now sometimes we need to identify which Mac we have. Not a general description like you have a MacBook or an iMac. But the exact model. This can be extremely useful especially when you're trouble shooting things or asking for support. All too often people like me are simply told that the person has a MacBook Pro or an iMac and not which model they've got. Sometimes it doesn't matter but often it is extremely important. So in macOS Ventura it's pretty straight forward. You go to the Apple Menu here and then you go to About This Mac. Then you're going to look for the name of the Mac. In this case Mac Studio. But don't stop there. Also look underneath it for further description. In this case a Mac Studio is pretty straight forward. It's just Mac Studio 2022. But here's what I get when I look at my MacBook Air. You could see it identifies itself as MacBook Air. Also M2, 2022. So that is the full model. MacBook Air M2, 2022. Here's an older MacBook I have. This one can't be updated past macOS Monterey. In macOS Monterey and before things looked a little different. When you went to About This Mac you'd come up with a dialogue that looks like this and in the overview section you had to kind of look down further to see the Mac name. In this case it's MacBook Pro 13 inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports. Now you might think that last part is just identifying some of the hardware on the Mac. But this is all part of the name because there is actually a Two Thunderbolt Port version. All of this is important when you want to identify the Mac. Now notice here it also tells you the version of macOS you are running which is often just as important as knowing the model. So in this case it says macOS Monterey, Version 12.6.1. All that is important when trying to get help whether you've got version 12.3 or 12.6.1 can be a critical piece of information. Back here on my Mac Studio you can see it shows the macOS version a little further down on the list. In this case Ventura 13.4. Now to find out the version of the piece of software you are using you can look in one of two places. For instance, if I'm using Pages here then I could go to Pages about Pages and I could see it's version 13.0. But sometimes apps don't have an About Window like that and sometimes they don't show the version number there. So in that case you can always go in the Finder. Go to your Applications Folder. Then look for the Application that you want to know about. For instance Pages. If I do File, Get Info, or Command i, I can see here the version 13.0. This will work for any app. The version number is always going to be shown. So here's a third party app and I can see this is version 3.3.5. Now every Mac also has a Model Identifier and a Model Number. Usually when trying to get help online that's not really important. Sometimes if you're looking for parts online or maybe a case or something like that you want to go and get the Model Number. You can find that in macOS Ventura by going to About This Mac and then go to More Info. This takes you actually into System Settings and then General and then About. So you can go that route as well. You want to scroll down here and go to System Reports. In System Report if you select Hardware here you'll find something called the Model Identifier which sometimes is used. Other times you'll need the model number. Sometimes however hardware manufacturers use a different model number, one that you can't really find this way. You actually have to look on the Mac itself and it is printed in usually very tiny print underneath on the back of the Mac. But another way to do it is to get the excellent app, Mactracker. It is free in the Mac App Store. You can usually cross-reference all those model numbers here. So, for instance, I'll look under Desktops. I'll look at Mac Studio. There's only this one model right here. I'll double click it and you could see here under General it shows the Model Identifier. So in my case it was Mac 13,2 and there's the model number that I would find underneath the Mac. You'll also be able to find here something called the Order Number. This is also something that sometimes product makers use to identify which model their case or whatever it is fits on. So can use those other ways to identify your Mac when searching for products and things online. But when asking somebody for help it is always best to use the model name that you find when you go to the About dialogue. That's the quickest way to give the other person the idea of exactly what it is you've got. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching. Related Subjects: Mac Hardware (51 videos) Related Video Tutorials: Learn How To Properly Record Your Screen on a Mac in One Minute ― Using 3D Model Animations In Keynote
