Make sure the El Capitan installer (or at least a copy of it), called Install OS X El Capitan.app, is in its default location in your main Applications folder (/Applications). Select the text of. This answer assumes you want the El Capitan USB installer to install El Capitan on an older Mac capable of running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). In this case, you can solve the problem by using the older Mac to create the El Capitan USB installer. Oct 01, 2015 The Application Install OS X El Capitan will appear in /Applications. STEP 2: Create a Bootable USB Drive with UniBeast Take a deep breath and take your time- this is pretty simple, but it's easy to miss things if you rush. The installer you create can be used to install OS X El Capitan 10.11 on any eligible Mac computer. This is a more convent and less time consuming way to install OS X El Capitan on multiple machines, gives you a handy emergency disk, and enables a fresh OS X install.
*Quick note from Save Apple Dollars - Older OS X Images can now be downloaded directly from Apple at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 please right click on the image link and select “save as”.
By Roman Loyola at www.macworld.com
Senior Editor, Macworld | JUL 3, 2017 1:32 PM PDT
Apple uses its App Store to distribute its software, like new Mac operating systems. It’s convenient, but sometimes it can take a while for a download to finish. And if you have multiple Macs, it’s inefficient to download the new OS to each and every Mac.
That’s why I like to make a bootable external drive for the sole purpose of installing the Mac operating system. When I need to tend to a bunch of Macs, it’s much faster to use a bootable drive instead of going to each Mac, launching the App Store, searching for the operating system, downloading it (after entering my Apple ID), and then running the installer.
You can create a bootable USB flash drive with the macOS Sierra installer that’s now available. The installer software will take up nearly 5GB of storage space. Here’s how to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive.
Macworld also has bootable-install-drive instructions for:
Lion (OS X 10.7)
Download the macOS Sierra installer
Launch the App Store app, then look for macOS Sierra in the store. (Here’s a link.) Click on the Download button, and your Mac will download the installer to your Applications folder. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer.
Keep the installer in the Applications folder.
If you’ve already upgraded your Mac to Sierra, the installer is removed from the Applications folder. You can download it again if you go to Purchased in the App Store. Look for macOS Sierra in the list of apps that you’ve bought, and click on the Download button. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer.
Get an external drive
You can use a USB flash drive or a hard drive with room for the installer software. I’ve used different drives with success, including a VisionTek 120GB USB 3.0 Pocket Solid State Drive ($83 on Amazon) and an old 8GB Iomega Micro Mini Hard Drive.
Don’t worry if the drive isn’t formatted for the Mac. The drive will be reformatted automatically as part of the process. Change the name of your drive to Untitled; you need to do this for the steps below.
The quick and easy way
The process detailed below involves the Terminal. If your really don’t want to use Terminal, there are a couple of free apps you can use.
Install Disk Creator is a straightforward way to create a boot disk. I was able to make a macOS Sierra external USB boot disk in a few minutes, and the installation worked without a hitch. Also works with older versions of OS X.
Diskmaker X is a popular app. It also supports older versions of OS X.
Use the Terminal to create a boot disk
So you have your external drive, and the Sierra beta installer is in place. Now you’re going to use Terminal to create a boot drive. If you’ve never used Terminal before, don’t worry. This is pretty easy.
Here are the steps to create a macOS Sierra beta boot disk. (Apple also has these instructions.)
Connect the external drive to your Mac. (In the Terminal command you will use, I use
Untitledto represent your external drive. If your drive is named something else, you need to changeUntitledto the name of your drive.)Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).
Copy the following:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.appGo back to Terminal and paste the copied code at the prompt.
Terminal will ask for a password. This is your user password. Terminal doesn’t display characters when you type it in. Hit Return.
Terminal will tell you that it will erase your drive. To confirm that you want to continue, type Y and hit Return.
You’ll see that Terminal erases your drive. When that part is done, your Mac may ask you if you want to use the drive for Time Machine. Click Don’t Use.
Terminal will copy the installer file to your drive. This will take a few minutes.
After copying, Terminal is done. You should see Terminal display a “Copy complete” and Done notice. You can quit Terminal and your drive is ready for use.
How to boot from the installer drive
Plug your external drive into your Mac.
Power up (or restart) your Mac. Press down on the Option key while the Mac boots.
After a few moments, your Mac should display the Startup Manager, which will show you the available boot drives. Click on the external drive and hit Return. (You don’t need to select a network to proceed.)
Your Mac will display an OS X Utilites window. If you want to install Sierra and leave the data intact, select Install OS X. If you want to start over and wipe out the data, you need to go into Disk Utility to reformat the internal drive first, and then install macOS Sierra.
Full Credit for this article is given to Roman Loyola and www.macworld.com please visit their website for more helpful information about fixing Macs.
If you use pkgutil to expand the InstallMacOSX.pkg it opens to three items, the Distribution file, InstallMacOSX.pkg and Resources. You can alter the Distribution file to ignore the supported platform check, see below.
Creating the Install OS X El Capitan.app on a mac that came with a newer OS than El Capitan.
Download the InstallMacOSX.dmg from Section 4 of How To Upgrade To El Capitan
Double-click to open InstallMacOSX.dmg to Install MacOSX.pkg.
Drag InstallMacOSX.pkg to the Desktop.
Open Terminal, enter the text
A folder will be created on the Desktop after a while with the contents of the .pkg file.
In there you will see an item called Distribution, Control-click on that and select Open With
go to Other and select Text Edit.
When the file opens scroll down to the section that reads,
function isSupportedPlatform(){
type in at the end return true; so it now reads as,
function isSupportedPlatform(){return true;
Now click Save and close the document.
Go back to Terminal and enter the text,
press Return, after several minutes, be patient, (check to see if the prompt has returned to Terminal) a new package will be created on the Desktop.
When created double-click on that and an installation window will open where you will now convert the
new InstallElCapitan.pkg to the Install OS X El Capitan.app which will be placed in your Applications folder.
El Capitan Os X Usb Installer Download
You can now create a bootable USB using the install app and createinstallmedia,
If you have the time I would be grateful if you could give this a trial, it works here on my mac, but I would like confirmation from yourself or any others reading this that the procedure works on macs that came with macOS Sierra or newer pre-installed. Oh and tell me if my description of the procedure is easy to follow and understand.
Download El Capitan Without App Store
Jan 15, 2020 12:58 AM