Split View and refined window management
El Capitan made it easier to arrange windows and introduced Split View for working with two apps side by side in full screen.
Major OS release · macOS
OS X El Capitan
Software history
Defining features
Feature summaries are anchored to the cited Apple first-party source.
Smarter Spotlight
Spotlight became more flexible about natural-language queries and could surface information such as weather, stocks, sports and web video.
Built-in app improvements
Mail, Notes, Photos, Safari and Maps received focused workflow improvements rather than a broad visual redesign.
Metal on the Mac
Apple brought Metal to OS X to improve system graphics efficiency and give games and professional apps lower-overhead access to the GPU.
System performance refinements
El Capitan focused heavily on responsiveness, including faster app launching and switching alongside graphics-performance improvements.
Mac OS X / OS X / macOS
Device support
Archive-product links show the canonical products represented by this project. The full device-name list preserves the broader structured support evidence, including hardware refreshes that do not have their own archive node.
Supported archive products8 mapped products
Full device coverage47 device names
- Mac Pro (Early 2008)
- Mac Pro (Early 2009)
- Mac Pro (Late 2013)
- Mac mini (Late 2012, Core i5)
- Mac mini (Late 2012, Core i7)
- Mac mini (Late 2014)
- Mac mini (Mid 2010)
- Mac mini (Mid 2011, Dedicated graphics)
- Mac mini (Mid 2011, Integrated graphics)
- Mac mini (Mid 2011, Server)
- MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)
- MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009)
- MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010)
- MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015)
- MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2016)
- MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2015)
- MacBook Air (11-inch, Late 2010)
- MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2011)
- MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2012)
- MacBook Air (13-inch, Late 2010)
- MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011)
- MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009, Dedicated Graphics)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009, Integrated Graphics)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)
- MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010)
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015, Dedicated graphics)
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015, Integrated graphics)
- Xserve (Early 2009)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Early 2013)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013, Dedicated Graphics)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013, Integrated Graphics)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2014)
- iMac (27-inch, Late 2009, Core i5/i7)
- iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)
- iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)
- iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010)
- iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)
- iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
Support dropped at this major
No mapped archive product was fully dropped when this major version arrived.
Public releases
Public release history
Every canonical public release assigned to this major version, including the initial release and later point updates.
2015
- 10.11Initial major release
- 10.11.1Point update
- 10.11.2Point update
2016
- 10.11.3Point update
- 10.11.4Point update
- 10.11.5Point update
- 10.11.6Point update