In which month or year Catalina will stop to be supported ?

gambarot wrote:

I need to know when Catalina will stop to be supported since I am using a Mac Book Air 2012 and I can only purchase a second-hand one since I cannot afford a new one.

The final official release of macOS Catalina was v. 10.15.7 on July 22, 2022. Most analysts & users consider that to have been the "end of life" date even though Apple does not publish an end-of-life schedule.

The last security update for Catalina was Security Update 2022-005 also in July 2022. The last Safari update for Catalina was Safari 15.6.1 issued in August 2022. To my knowledge there have been no subsequent updates.

One would conclude that Catalina has stopped being supported. But that does not mean that it is unusable or unsecure. If you have kept your apps up to date (to the extent they remain supported by their vendors), use reasonable security & privacy measures and are cautious in your use of the internet you should be fine for years to come.

Get your next Mac from the Apple refurbished site, or OWC. That way, you won't get a Mac still password protected by some other user, or not properly configured for resale. Macs purchased from the Apple refurbished store are in like new condition, ship quickly, have a 12-month warranty, and can have AppleCare added.

November 30, 2022

macOS 10.15 Catalina - End of Life - SCS Computing Facilities - Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)

Good suggestion. Firefox should continue to be supported on Catalina with updates for at least 2 more years. Mozilla has a good record for longterm support. Even FFox support on High Sierra is only coming to an end late this year.

Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support

is a good article to go by. That doesn't mean there won't be authorized service centers that won't help you after the official support has ended. But after that point any parts are open market.

Both:

http://www.macsales.com/

http://www.dvwarehouse.com/

have a good reputation when it comes to selling refurbished Mac equipment that is older. There are forums about specific equipment on this board and third party sites like http://www.lowendmac.com/ that help people with obsolete equipment. I might also add web browsers that support Catalina are plenty:

Browsers by Mac operating system - Apple Community

People like myself depend on older equipment, though I was able to get a nice 2015 cheap. It still doesn't support Ventura or Sonoma.

It may also be worth noting that the latest Firefox web browser version (126.0) works with macOS 10.15 Catalina.

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/system-requirements

We cannot say since how long an older operating system is supported is up to Apple.