How can I update my iMac?
I want to update my iMac
iMac 21.inch
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15
Your tag line says that your 21.5" iMac is running Catalina now.
If its hardware model year is
- 2019 – You can upgrade to Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, or Sequoia.
- 2017 – You can upgrade to Big Sur, Monterey, or Ventura.
- Late 2015 – You can upgrade to Big Sur or Monterey.
- Mid 2014 – You can upgrade to Big Sur.
- Earlier than that – No upgrades beyond Catalina are available.
How to download and install macOS - Apple Support
Note that Big Sur and Monterey are no longer among "the most recent three" that get the most "love" from vendors like Microsoft and Adobe. Ventura will probably drop off that list this September, October, or November.
If your 21.5" iMac is eligible for an upgrade to Monterey or later, and it currently starts up from a hard drive or a 1 TB Fusion Drive, you may want to consider getting an external SSD and using it as your startup drive. Once 21.5" iMacs got thin, they started using slow 2.5" hard drive mechanisms; and starting in Late 2015, Apple got overly stingy with the amount of SSD space included with a 1 TB Fusion Drive.
Hard drives and 1 TB Fusion Drives are therefore often a cause of slowness in late-era 21.5" iMacs – especially ones running newer versions of the operating system. (The 24" M4 iMacs to which Tesserax refers all have internal SSDs which will run rings around those old hard drives and Fusion Drives.)
