Power Manager 5.16.0 Released

We are pleased to announce the launch of Power Manager 5.16. This update extends support for macOS back to 10.13 (High Sierra).

This update restores support for four older major versions of macOS:

• macOS 11 (Big Sur, 2020)
• macOS 10.15 (Catalina, 2019)
• macOS 10.14 (Mojave, 2018)
• macOS 10.13 (High Sierra, 2017)

With Power Manager, we aim to support the last three major versions of the operating system. Beyond that, we offer legacy versions, guides, and support where possible.

When we modernised Power Manager, the code was carefully written to support further back than macOS 10.13. We know many of you are using older Macs or have older hardware running in supporting roles. We want to support these machines for as long as they are useful – the family licence is a great deal in these situations.

Unfortunately the platform’s tooling makes shipping for older versions of macOS difficult.

Power Manager’s Scheduler supports macOS as far back as OS X 10.9 (Mavericks). Mavericks was the first version of macOS to support Transport Layer Security v1.2 (TLS) and Power Manager enforces TLS v1.2 as a minimum security requirement.

Ironically, the limitations surround the macOS application. Building the application itself is a problem. The platform’s developer tools support an ever shifting window of macOS versions. With macOS 27, the accompanying developer tools only support back to macOS 12. The previous year’s tooling supported back to macOS 10.13. The support window shrunk.

Beyond the tooling, code signing and shipping a single product supporting an ever widening range of macOS versions introduces more problems. All these problems are technical and could be overcome but not without significant effort and diminishing returns.

We have to draw a line somewhere; however uncomfortable or frustrating that may be. We will continue to support at least the last three major versions of macOS and begrudgingly accept the imposed support window of the platform’s tooling.

So with this update, we are focusing on what is possible here and now. Today we celebrate Power Manager’s widest range of supported macOS versions.

A detailed version history of Power Manager is available.

Updating Power Manager

Power Manager will automatically check for updates every so often, so there is nothing to do. The update will automatically be offered to you during the next few weeks.

If you want to update to the latest Power Manager now, use the Check for Updates menu item in the Power Manager menu. In case of problems, please follow the manual update steps.