MacOS Monterey


macOS Monterey is the eighteenth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. The successor to macOS Big Sur, it was announced at WWDC 2021 on June 7, 2021, and released on October 25, 2021. macOS Monterey was succeeded by macOS Ventura, which was released on October 24, 2022.
The operating system is named after Monterey Bay, continuing the trend of releases named after California locations since 2013's 10.9 Mavericks.
macOS Monterey is the final version of macOS that supports the 2015–2017 MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro, 2014 Mac Mini, 2015 iMac and cylindrical Mac Pro, as its successor, macOS Ventura, drops support for those models. It is the last version of macOS that can run on Macs with 4GB of RAM and MagSafe 2 Macs, and is the first version to run on a MacBook with MagSafe 3.

Changes

Monterey introduced several new features and changes, including the following:
  • Shortcuts for the Mac
  • TestFlight for the Mac
  • Provisions to allow the planned introduction of Universal Control, which allows a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple Macs and iPads. It works on Macs with Apple silicon and some with an Intel processor, including MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, iMac, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro. It works on these iPads: iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad, and iPad Mini.
  • Support for the Apple Music Voice Plan Subscription.
  • Portrait Mode and Noise Cancellation features for FaceTime and some apps.
  • New Toolbar features and designs for Finder and the Preview app.
  • Have a Live Memoji and Animoji right on the lock screen.
  • A yellow privacy indicator on the menu bar for indicating if the Mac's microphone or camera is active.
  • Live Text, which allows a user to copy, paste, translate and look up text from images displayed by Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look, and Safari.
  • New Passwords Manager for Mac
  • New on-device machine-learning–activated keyboard dictation using Siri, and also now for almost unlimited duration.
  • Low Power Mode for Mac that enables longer battery life for lightweight workflows such as reading PDFs, Web browsing, listening to music, etc. This works on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
  • A redesigned optional compact interface for the Safari browser.
  • Support for playing AirPlay content streamed from recent iOS and iPadOS devices and Macs, including MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, iPhone 6s and later, iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad, and iPad Mini. Older iPhone, iPad, and Mac models may share content at a lower resolution to supported Mac models when "Allow AirPlay for" is set to "Everyone" or "Anyone on the same network" in Sharing preferences.
  • Improvements to FaceTime, including the ability to share a screen and the SharePlay function that enables multiple users to watch or listen simultaneously and in sync.
  • The ability to factory reset the Mac from the System Preferences app.
  • Visual Look Up makes it easy to identify objects found within user's photos.
  • Focus to set different modes to filter notifications across iPhones, iPads and Macs.
  • The Time Machine backup functionality excludes more system files.
  • Provisions to allow the planned introduction of "Expanded Protections for Children," which will apply cryptography to detect and help limit the spread of child sexual abuse material online by scanning the user's iCloud photos.
  • Accessibility option to change the mouse pointer's colors.
  • Tips notifications.
  • The removal of a previously bundled PHP interpreter.
  • The removal of a previously bundled Python 2.7 interpreter
  • The removal of the ability to use custom Quartz Composer filters and plugins in Photo Booth.
  • networkQuality, a command-line tool for measuring upload/download capacity, upload/download flows, and upload/download responsiveness
  • An automatically populated "Games" folder within launchpad
  • Support for ProMotion in new 2021 MacBook Pro
  • New Object Capture API for creating 3D models using images

    Applications

Maps

adds a 3D globe, with increased mountain, desert, and forest detail.

Messages

supports new features, also introduced in iOS 15, such as "Shared with You" which provides shortcut links to content shared via Messages in other Apple apps such as Safari, Photos, Music, and News.
When multiple photos are sent/received, they are now displayed as a collection instead of multiple messages. A download button is provided to download all photos simultaneously.

Known problems

Users and developers have reported the following:
  • Laptops unable to boot
  • Inability to charge sleeping laptops with MagSafe
  • Mouse pointer memory leak issue
  • Audio issue with speaker and audio output crackling and popping
  • Problems connecting external displays to Mac using any version of Monterey
  • Unicode Hex Input does not work if the code point number is 0??0

    Supported hardware

macOS Monterey drops support for Macs released from 2013 to 2014, including all Macs with Nvidia GPUs.
Macs that support macOS Monterey are as follows.
  • iMac
  • iMac Pro
  • MacBook
  • MacBook Air
  • MacBook Pro
  • Mac Mini
  • Mac Pro
  • Mac Studio
By using patch tools, macOS Monterey can be unofficially installed on earlier computers that are officially unsupported, such as the 2014 iMac and the 2013 MacBook Pro. Using these methods, it is possible to install macOS Monterey on computers as old as a 2008 MacBook Pro and iMac and 2009 Mac Mini.

Release history

See Apple's main pages for Monterey release notes: for and for , as well as their current .

Timeline of Mac operating systems