(Note you will need to replace the term ‘MyVolume’ in the createinstallmedia command below with whatever name you give your drive). Your drive will probably be called ‘Untitled’ by default, you could give your drive a name such as ‘macOS’ or ‘USB’.Choose GUID Partition Map as the Scheme.Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the Format.Select the root drive in the sidebar (the next step won’t work if you only select the volume).Now you will see the external root drive in addition to the volume below it. Choose Show All Devices from the options. Before this next step, note: if you are running High Sierra or later you will need to click on the View dropdown below the close minimize buttons.

Launch Disk Utility (press Command + spacebar and start to type Disk Utility).Plug in an external drive with at least 15GB space as that’s how much the installer will require.These are the instructions to follow to create your bootable USB – note there will be tiny adjustments depending on the installer you require: Note that the createinstallmedia command erases anything on your external disk though, so make sure there’s nothing on it that you need. You’ll find all the createinstallmedia commands below, including the Monterey createinstallmedia command. The createinstallmedia command makes it possible to create a bootable copy of an installer on any drive that’s connected to your Mac. Since Mavericks, creating a bootable installation of macOS requires a single command in Terminal. Also, the processes have changed slightly since Mavericks so if your looking to create an installation of one of the ‘Cat’ versions of Mac OS X you should read this older article instead. Note, the createinstallmedia method described here doesn’t work under OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or earlier – it requires OS X 10.7 Lion or later. Now you have the installation files, we can move on to the process of making the bootable installer. Step 2: Create a bootable installer for macOS A disk image named InstallOS.dmg will download and once it does you need to locate the pkg installer inside the disk image. Getting old versions of macOS is a little more difficult if you don’t know where to look, but Apple provides dmg files of these older macOS versions(you need to download them in Safari). Once the installer is downloaded DO NOT click on install as you need the installation file for the next stage of this tutorial.You may see a warning asking for confirmation that you want to download the software if you are already running it.Click on Get and the installation files will start to download.You may need to close the Mac App Store and use Safari for this to work. Click these links to get the version of macOS you want from the Mac App Store.To get the installer for macOS Ventura, Monterey or Big Sur follow these steps:

How to get Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur or older installer

The Mac App Store is probably the easier option, but there can still be difficulties depending on which version of macOS your machine is running, and if you were hoping to grab older installation files that can be tricky – we have another article discussing how to get older versions of macOS. The installation filesĭepending on which version of macOS you are running, and the version you want to to install, you will either be able to get the installation files from Software Update in System Preferences, the Mac App Store, or you will have to obtain them from elsewhere. Note: If you have data on the drive that you plan to use you will need to transfer it to another drive, or get a new drive, as it will be completely formatted and erased. Read our round-up of the best SSD drives for Mac where we recommend the LaCie Portable SSD, but you could use any cheap USB thumb drive. If you have an M1 Mac you might actually be better off with a Thunderbolt drive because there have been some issues with using USB drives with the M1 Mac. You’ll also benefit from USB 3, or USB Type C – this may be your only choice if you have a newer Mac (otherwise you will need an adapter). We recommend a Flash memory stick, rather than a standard hard drive, as it will be quicker.

Download mac os sierra dmg