by In this quick tutorial, we will be showing you how to easily check what version of macOS that you are running.
There are a few reasons why you might want to see what release you are running. You may be using a feature that isn’t available or trying to make a bug report that requires them to know what release of macOS you are running.
Luckily, macOS actually makes finding the version you are running a surprisingly easy and straightforward process.
There are two key methods for checking the version of macOS you are running. The first is to use your desktop interface, which requires just a couple of clicks and is easily accessible from your desktop.
The other way to check your macOS version is to use the command line/terminal. There is a simple and easy-to-remember command that you can use to print out the version number.
Finding your macOS Version from the Desktop
macOS actually makes it surprisingly easy to view the version of the operating system you have installed from the desktop. In fact, it is just a few simple clicks to get to the version number.
1. At the top-left of your screen, you should see the Apple icon. Click this icon to bring up the context menu.
2. In the context menu that appears, click the option that is labeled “About This Mac“. This will take you to the screen where you can find the version you are running.
3. With the “About This Mac” screen now open on your device, you can find the macOS version you are running. This version string will be next to the “macOS” heading.
In our example below, we are running macOS Sonoma 14.3.1. Sonoma is the name of the version we are running, and “14.3.1” is the exact version number.
Older versions of macOS might display this version differently but it is all easily accessible from this one menu.
Using the Terminal to get your macOS Version Number
It is also possible to get the macOS version number using the terminal. This is useful when you are connecting to your Mac remotely using a service like SSH or trying to write a script that needs to know what version of macOS someone is running.
1. Of course, you will need to start this section by opening the terminal.
One of the easiest ways to open the terminal is to open the Spotlight feature by pressing COMMAND + SPACEBAR. After opening Spotlight, type in “terminal” and press the ENTER key.
2. Once you have the terminal open, you can use the command below to get the version of macOS you are running.
sw_versWhen you use the command this way, you will get three different values. The first is the product name, the second is the product version, and the third and final value is the build version.
The value you are after here is the “ProductVersion“, which you can see from our result that we are running macOS version “14.3.1“.
3. If you are just interested in the operating system’s version, then you don’t need a bunch of the information returned by this command. Luckily the developers thought about this and made it pretty easy to get the “sw_vers” command to only print your macOS version.
To get just the operating system version, use the “-productversion” option alongside the “sw_vers” command, as we have shown below.
sw_vers -productversionBelow, you can see how just the version number was printed to the terminal.
14.3.1Conclusion
At this point in the guide, you should know how to easily find and check the version of macOS you are running.
Knowing how to check what version of MacOS you are running can be useful for determining what actions you can take.
Please feel free to post a comment below if you have any questions about how you can find your version number.
If you liked this tutorial, we highly recommend that you explore our many other macOS guides.
