Determining Mac Hardware Manufacture Date Using OSQuery
Update – Oct 19, 2025
We no longer use Kolide, and Kolide has been acquired by 1Password. I’m leaving this published in case it is useful but I’m not sure if this all still works or not.
We use Kolide on our managed Mac fleet for our customers, which has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool. They recently wrote in a blog post how you can use OSQuery ↗ to look up the hardware manufacture date of your Macs. It’s pretty cool, check out the article here -
Determining Mac Hardware Manufacture Date Using OSquery ↗
UPDATE#
Here is the actual query that the article ends up with, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing. I think it is extremely interesting.
WITH
serial_partial AS (
SELECT
SUBSTR(hardware_serial,4,1) AS char_4,
SUBSTR(hardware_serial,5,1) AS char_5
FROM system_info
),
mac_manufacture_year(char_4,year,offset) AS (
VALUES
('C','2020',0),('D','2020',26),('F','2021',0),('G','2021',26),('H','2022',0),('J','2022',26),('K','2013',0),('L','2013',26),('M','2014',0),('N','2014',26),('P','2015',0),('Q','2015',26),('R','2016',0),('S','2016',26),('T','2017',0),('V','2017',26),('W','2018',0),('X','2018',26),('Y','2019',0),('Z','2019',26)
),
mac_manufacture_week(char_5,week) AS (
VALUES
('1',1),('2',2),('3',3),('4',4),('5',5),('6',6),('7',7),('8',8),('9',9),('C',10),('D',11),('F',12),('G',13),('H',14),('J',15),('K',16),('M',17),('N',18),('L',19),('P',20),('Q',21),('R',22),('T',23),('V',24),('W',25),('X',26),('Y',27)
),
merge_data AS (
SELECT
year,
(week + offset) AS week
FROM serial_partial
JOIN mac_manufacture_year USING(char_4)
JOIN mac_manufacture_week USING(char_5)
),
date_modified AS (
SELECT
year || '-01-01' AS year_start,
('+' || (week * 7) || ' days') AS offset_days
FROM merge_data
)
SELECT *,
date(year_start,offset_days) AS manufacture_date
FROM date_modified;