macos – Probability upgrading iPhone to iOS 26 will forestall me from backing as much as Catalina Mac Mini?

TL;DR: At the moment, iOS 26 sync will virtually definitely work all the way down to macOS 10.11. However some day Apple will probably bump the minimal compatibility requirement.

The software program bundles you are searching for are referred to as MobileDevice and CoreTypes. As @benwiggy explains of their reply, macOS will often immediate you to obtain newer variations of those in case you plug in a tool that’s too new to be recognised by the at the moment put in ones.

It does this by consulting the Catalina software program replace catalog. You possibly can obtain that file and open it in a textual content editor in case you like, and seek for MobileDeviceOnDemand.pkg. You may see obtain URLs for MobileDevice and CoreTypes, together with the date of when this bundle was revealed:

Packages

    
        Digest
        13ff16be8ff08ef7b4be40d2b7205d872dc78f79
        Dimension
        13898217
        MetadataURL
        https://swdist.apple.com/content material/downloads/29/55/093-63076-A_9B6CEPMG6W/qomg6emzngs4pftmpapi5hxwuvnu2t0wig/MobileDeviceOnDemand.pkm
        URL
        http://swcdn.apple.com/content material/downloads/29/55/093-63076-A_9B6CEPMG6W/qomg6emzngs4pftmpapi5hxwuvnu2t0wig/MobileDeviceOnDemand.pkg
    
    
        Digest
        1d1cf2b06891bd1ebbd64df57fc6af0ecd0b1e74
        Dimension
        274166942
        MetadataURL
        https://swdist.apple.com/content material/downloads/29/55/093-63076-A_9B6CEPMG6W/qomg6emzngs4pftmpapi5hxwuvnu2t0wig/CoreTypes.pkm
        URL
        http://swcdn.apple.com/content material/downloads/29/55/093-63076-A_9B6CEPMG6W/qomg6emzngs4pftmpapi5hxwuvnu2t0wig/CoreTypes.pkg
    

PostDate
2025-10-15T23:02:51Z

For those who needed to (or if macOS did not immediate you for some purpose), it’s best to be capable to obtain these two packages from the URLs you see and set up them manually.

Additionally, in case you evaluate them to those within the Tahoe catalog, you may discover that it is the very same packages, with the one distinction being that the URLs there are https as a substitute of http. That is already an excellent indicator that it will work on Catalina.

Now, in case you have a MobileDeviceOnDemand.pkg downloaded and wanna get technical, you may run some Terminal instructions to determine what the binaries contained in the bundle declare to be suitable with:

% pkgutil --expand-full MobileDeviceOnDemand.pkg /tmp/MD
% otool -l -arch x86_64 /tmp/MD/Payload/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/MobileDevice | fgrep -B1 -A3 LC_VERSION_MIN_MACOSX
Load command 9
      cmd LC_VERSION_MIN_MACOSX
  cmdsize 16
  model 10.11
      sdk 14.0

This closely means that macOS 10.11 is the present cutoff. (Observe that you will have to question the x86_64 slice, for the reason that arm64(e) slice could have a minimal model of 11.0.) We are able to test the El Capitan and Yosemite catalogs to confirm this, and certainly, El Capitan will get the identical bundles marketed, whereas Yosemite will get a lot older packages from late 2019.

Now, if for any purpose the bundles from the catalog do not work, there are two extra locations the place you may get them – you may need to log in on Apple’s developer portal, however any primary Apple ID will work, you don’t want a paid developer account.

For those who go there proper now and scroll all the way in which to the underside, you may see a “Machine Help for macOS 26 beta 2”, construct 1950A4, launched on June 23, 2025. It is a bundle that bundles MobileDevice and CoreTypes collectively, which Apple generally releases together with beta variations of their working techniques. They do that to assist digital machines of newer beta macOS variations on older macOS hosts, however the VM really emulates a USB machine throughout set up, so that is the very same stuff that is wanted to sync with an actual iPhone.

The opposite place that you would be able to get it from is Xcode. For those who go to Extra Downloads within the developer heart, obtain any of the Xcode XIP information, extract them, and peek inside (right-click > Present Bundle Contents), then below /Contents/Sources/Packages, you may discover CoreTypes.pkg and MobileDevice.pkg. And Xcode 26.2 Launch Candidate, these packages nonetheless declare to be suitable with macOS 10.11.

So I am satisfied that iOS 26 will work with macOS 10.15, however I’ve not experimentally verified it.