Anyone had success with Big Sur using Clover? Upgrading from Mojave.

I'm running Mojave and have a couple questions about updating to Big Sur.
1) Do I have to upgrade to Catalina first? If so, do I need to do anything other than updating Clover to the latest version? (I plan on cloning my working Mojave installation to an external HD so I can revert if I run into issues).

2) OpenCore seems great but looks rather involved to set up, and I don't exactly have that much time on my hands. Has anyone had success with Big Sur and the latest version of Clover? I know there's no official Tonymacx8 guide yet but are there any out there?

TheJMan36 said:

I'm running Mojave and have a couple questions about updating to Big Sur.
1) Do I have to upgrade to Catalina first? If so, do I need to do anything other than updating Clover to the latest version? (I plan on cloning my working Mojave installation to an external HD so I can revert if I run into issues).

2) OpenCore seems great but looks rather involved to set up, and I don't exactly have that much time on my hands. Has anyone had success with Big Sur and the latest version of Clover? I know there's no official Tonymacx8 guide yet but are there any out there?

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Sure there are people that have Big Sur with the versions of Clover that boot Big Sur, the reality is that clover is using OC to boot Big Sur. So you are basically setting up two Boot loaders to make it work.

OC looks a lot more involved than it really is.

There is a guide:


You can also download OpenCore Configurator and use sanity checker to check your config file, it is mostly based on your CPU generation.

Download Open core
Download the latest of the kexts you currently use in clover put them in the kext folder
Use Virtual SMC instead of FakeSMC
Follow the Guide and use the sample to create your config.
Run the sanity check on the config it will tell you what should be enabled/disabled for Coffee lake CPU.
Boot Mojave with the OC EFI if it works try running system update and let it do its thing.

So if I get OpenCore working I should be able to update directly to Big Sur from Mojave using System Preferences?

TheJMan36 said:

So if I get OpenCore working I should be able to update directly to Big Sur from Mojave using System Preferences?

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I see no reason that you should not be able to.

scottkendall said:

I see no reason that you should not be able to.

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Will I be able dual boot Windows from a separate drive as I do now with Clover?

taskrov said:

Will I be able dual boot Windows from a separate drive as I do now with Clover?

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My laptop does..

TheJMan36 said:

So if I get OpenCore working I should be able to update directly to Big Sur from Mojave using System Preferences?

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You should switch to OC before the update. Otherwise the App Store won't work in Big Sur. With OC the update should work like you said.

I think I might just end up sticking with Mojave or Catalina for a while. I'm hoping Apple improves the GUI with their next update in September because man it looks ugly right now. Like why are we turning MacOS into iPad OS/ iOS again?

TheJMan36 said:

I think I might just end up sticking with Mojave or Catalina for a while. I'm hoping Apple improves the GUI with their next update in September because man it looks ugly right now. Like why are we turning MacOS into iPad OS/ iOS again?

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Because they want developers to develop apps once that work on all three OS's. When compared Catalina and Big Sur side by side the OS looks the same, sure the corners are a bit more rounded but that is about it. I doubt they will do an GUI overhaul next year for what ever the next OS is.