With the announcement of macOS Tahoe at WWDC25 this year on June 9th, we finally know what should or shouldn’t officially support the new update coming this year. Some of us including myself are running on a 2018 Mac mini, so we must now start dealing with what to do.

Recently Greg Hrutkay of Hrutkay Mods recently attempted an installation of Tahoe on a 2018 Mac mini attempting various different methods to no avail.
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Known issues with the T2 chip and OCLP

Noted on their website, the 2018/19 MacBook Air is not supported with OpenCore. There is a challenge getting the T2 to communicate when booted through OpenCorePkg, and due to the timeouts a KP is initiated by AppleKeyStore.kext.

Although the 2018/19 MacBook Air is officially supported up to macOS Sonoma, this issue is present even as far back as Ventura, if you try to boot with OpenCore.

Disabling T2 chip on a 2018 mini:

• Reboot into recovery > Startup Security Utility > Secure Boot > No Security
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OpenCore on a 2018 mini

As demonstrated by Greg using version 2.4.0, when allowing native models under “App”, you’re able to build and install OpenCore to the EFI partition of your mini’s SSD. Pressing and holding the Option key allows you to pick OpenCore, and selecting a supported OS to boot into poses no issue.

• In theory, if the Mac mini can boot into Sequoia via OpenCore, you can install any OS.. right?
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• OCLP 2.4.0 detects it’s installed after rebooting.
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Issues Attempting to boot Tahoe

• Cross-out symbol when attempting to boot a Tahoe OCLP USB via OpenCore
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• OCLP isn’t allowing external drives to boot on a 2018 mini , even if the external drive is a supported Mac
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(Above: Credit goes to Hrutkay Mods)

• In the image above, when OCLP is set to the host model it gets stuck around the networking kext.
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(Above: Credit goes to Hrutkay Mods)

• When spoofing the model to something entirely different such as a 2017 MacBook Pro, it throws a platform support kernel panic.
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• Supposedly it may or may not get to the desktop however it is entirely unstable
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Supported T2 Macs on macOS Tahoe

The last remaining Intel Macs all have T2 security chips. The extraordinary and talented team over at OCLP is already at work to chip away at the goal of having the 2018 mini on macOS Tahoe.

• 2019 Mac Pro
• 2020 27″ iMac
• 2019 16″ MacBook Pro
• 2020 13″ MacBook Pro

See: macOS Tahoe Full Installer Database – Mr. Macintosh – June 5, 2025
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Macs compatible with macOS Sequoia, but not Tahoe:

• 2020 MacBook Air
• 13″ 2018/19 MacBook Pro
• 15″ 2018/19 MacBook Pro
• 4K and 5K 2019 iMacs
• iMac Pro
• 2018 Mac mini