NAME

sw_vers — print macOS system version information

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

sw_vers prints macOS version information for the currently running operating system on the local machine.

When executed with no options sw_vers prints a short list of version properties:

      % sw_vers
      ProductName:              macOS
      ProductVersion:           13.0
      ProductVersionExtra:      (a)
      BuildVersion:             22A100

The ProductName property provides the name of the operating system release (typically "macOS"). The ProductVersion property defines the version of the operating system release (for example, "11.3" or "12.0"). The ProductVersionExtra property defines the Rapid Security Response version, if one is installed on the operating system (for example, "(a)" or "(b)"). The BuildVersion property provides the specific revision of the operating system as generated by the macOS build system.

OPTIONS

The output of sw_vers can be refined by the following options. These long-form options can also be passed in lowercase for convenience.

--productName

Print only the value of the ProductName property.

--productVersion

Print only the value of the ProductVersion property.

--productVersionExtra

Print only the value of the ProductVersionExtra property.

--buildVersion

Print only the value of the BuildVersion property.

EXAMPLES

% sw_vers --productName
macOS

% sw_vers --productVersion
13.0

% sw_vers --productVersionExtra
(a)

% sw_vers --buildVersion
22A100

COMPATIBILITY

Previous versions of sw_vers respected the SYSTEM_VERSION_COMPAT environment variable to provide compatibility fallback versions for scripts which did not support the macOS 11.0+ version transition. This is no longer supported, versions returned by sw_vers will always reflect the real system version.

sw_vers is backwards compatible with previous versions which expect options passed with a single dash, as in:

-productName

 

FILES

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist