Mac mini late 2011 can I upgrade higher than high Sierra?

[hansm]

Not sure if I may ask this question over here but my wife uses a Mac mini late 2011 on which according to apple you can not upgrade above high Sierra.
She faces some sw upgrade issues like ms office.
Is there a way to still upgrade to Mojave or Catalina?
Apple does not give access to it in the AppStore.
If yes, how to and does it have big impact on performance?
Thanks in advance.

 

[trs96]

OpenCore Legacy Patcher may be worth looking into.

GitHub - dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher: Experience macOS just like before

Experience macOS just like before. Contribute to dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[hansm]

Thank you!
I just watched the video on his site and it looks not to difficult to do
I will give it a try next few days.

 

[Ritchie333]

You can absolutely upgrade a 2011 Mac Mini to macOS Monterey using the OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Be aware that the stock GPU in a 2011 is not Metal-compliant so you will need to do a fair bit of root patching to get proper GPU acceleration.