Select the volume with the bootable installer, then click Continue.It displays all bootable volumes (which should be your installer and the internal drive on your Mac), and a gear icon labeled “Options”. Turn on the Mac and continue to hold down the power button until you see the startup options window.Plug your bootable installer into a Mac that has an Internet connection and that is compatible with the version of macOS you’re about to install.Otherwise, use the instructions for an Intel processor. If it shows Apple M1 or another Apple chip, then follow the Apple silicon instructions.
To see if your Mac uses Apple silicon, select About This Mac from the Apple () menu. Terminal at the successful conclusion of the createinstallmedia commandĭo you have a Mac with Apple silicon? If so, there’s a slightly different process. Terminal displays the progress of the erasure.
In each command, replace the name MyVolume with the name of your volume. These commands are dependent on the installer being in your Applications folder. At the Terminal prompt, type or copy and paste (easier and more accurate) one of the following commands.Find the Terminal app in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
For this article, I used a 2TB USB hard disk drive erased and formatted as Mac OS Extended and given the name Installer.
The installer has the name “Install macOS ”.įor Mac OS X El Capitan, the link downloads a disk image file named InstallMacOSX.dmg.
For macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave or macOS High Sierra, the links download an installer directly into your app folder. To ensure that you’re getting a valid, un-hacked, and legal version of macOS, you need to download it directly from Apple. The macOS Big Sur download page in the Mac App Store