To create a bootable El Capitan installer drive, you need the El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store and a Mac-formatted drive that’s big enough to hold the installer and all its data. This can be a hard drive, a solid-state drive (SSD), a thumb drive, or a USB stick—an 8GB thumb drive is perfect. This process works for both creating bootable USB installer for macOS Catalina for Hackintosh and also for Mac. With those in mind, whoever would like to install macOS Catalina or other version on Mac or install macOS Catalina or other version on Windows, we’ve prepared complete instructions to create a bootable USB installer for macOS Catalina.
By default, your Mac starts up from its built-in hard disk, but a startup disk can be any storage device that contains an operating system compatible with your Mac. For example, if you install macOS on an internal or external drive, your Mac can recognize that drive as a startup disk. You can then follow the steps in this article to start up from it.
When you use Startup Disk preferences to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk until you choose a different one.
If you see a message that your security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk, check the External Boot setting in Startup Security Utility.
When you use Startup Manager to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk once, then returns to using the disk selected in Startup Disk preferences.
If your Mac is using OS X Lion 10.7.3 or later, you can also use this method to start up from your Time Machine backup disk. Startup Manager identifies your Time Machine backup as ”EFI Boot.”
Check for these possibilities if you can't see your disk in Startup Disk preferences or Startup Manager, or your Mac won't start up from it.
Make sure that your startup disk is using a version of macOS that is compatible with your Mac. If in doubt, use the same Mac to reinstall macOS on that disk.
To start up from an external disk with macOS Catalina 10.15 or later, the disk must connect via USB-A, USB-C, or Thunderbolt, not FireWire.
If you're using a Mac that has the Apple T2 Security Chip, check the settings in Startup Security Utility. These settings determine whether your Mac can start up from another disk.
If you're in Startup Manager and can't see a third-party startup disk, the startup disk could be using Option ROM firmware. To enhance system security, Mac computers with up-to-date software don’t show devices that use Option ROM firmware until you load their firmware. To do that, press Option-Shift-Command-Period while in Startup Manager. If your startup disk appears, do that each time you want to start up from it or from another disk connected to it.
If you're using a firmware password, the ability to load Option ROM firmware is disabled as an additional security protection.
These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.
Find the appropriate download link in the upgrade instructions for each macOS version:
macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, ormacOS High Sierra
Installers for each of these macOS versions download directly to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina, Install macOS Mojave, or Install macOS High Sierra. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. Important: To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
OS X El Capitan
El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.
MyVolume
in these commands with the name of your volume.Y
to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the bootable installer is created. * If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath
argument, similar to the way this argument is used in the command for El Capitan.
After creating the bootable installer, follow these steps to use it:
For more information about the createinstallmedia
command and the arguments that you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter this path in Terminal:
Catalina:
Mojave:
High Sierra:
El Capitan: