Redownload Archived macOS Installers to Address Expired Certificates

In the High Sierra App Store, I get a download button for my purchases. It does not show up in a search, which is where I would get the GET button. I played around with the option, ctrl and command buttons, but no option to get the link.

Not sure why you would need it, but the link is available on the Apple Support page as ‎macOS High Sierra on the Mac App Store.

Maybe it works perfectly. But I would go via upgrading to High Sierra. There might be a valid reason. Maybe something with the conversion to APFS? Another way to upgrade to Mojave I discovered by accident. Try cmd-opt-R -> Internet Recovery and see which OS you get. My 90 years old mother-in-law is now on the bleeding edge with Mojave.

Three times today tried downloading the macOS Mojave installer, to a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) running Mojave and each time it downloaded and reported “application is damaged damaged and can’t be used to install mac OS.” I want to have a fresh installer so I can install Mojave on a new volume to run Parallels Desktop for some 32 bit apps. Any suggestions?

Did you try the softwareupdate command in Terminal, just to see if it’s different?

I get the impression that Apple threw lots of stuff up in the air with these updates, so I hope things will be settling down in the next few weeks.

Tried Terminal commands:
softwareupdate (provides the modifier commands)
softwareupdate -d (just says Software Update Tool)
and -l (just says Software Update Tool)

Can you provide the specific command to just download the Mojave installer?

From the article, with the correct version number:

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6

As I read the article that command is new under Catalina. I explained above I am still running Mojave. I want to be sure I have a Mojave installer before upgrading and optimally already installed on a partition running Mojave with Parallels Desktop before upgrading. In any case this command did not work for me on Mojave, this is the response from terminal:

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6
softwareupdate: unrecognized option `--fetch-full-installer'
softwareupdate: unrecognized option `--full-installer-version'
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Oh sorry, my mistake. Yes, that command only works in Catalina. You might be able to find something that works in Mojave by trawling the Mac sysadmin blogs like Der Flounder and Krypted.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?ls=1&mt=12

Thanks for these links, Adam. This is a useful community service. All of them worked for me except High Sierra, which required me to download DosDude1’s macOS High Sierra Patcher Tool for Unsupported Macs. That worked just fine. Now I have a complete collection of OS.

The main ones I use today are:

  1. Snow Leopard (on an old Mac Pro 1,1)
  2. Mountain Lion on a MacBook Air 2011 1.4GHz 4GB RAM
  3. El Capitan on everything else (work Mac Pro 6 core 3.46 GHz, 2011 MBP 17, 2011 MBP 15)
  4. Mojave on a Mac Pro 5,1 12-core 3.33 GHz

I really dislike Mojave but installed it to use the latest FCPX and for better performance on a Radeon RX580. The 32 bit warnings are extremely tiresome and dark mode gets dull after awhile too. It looks like I might have to go to switch from El Capitan to High Sierra across the board to use the latest version of some photo software I like. Dreading having to deal with High Sierra vagaries on three different computers. Very worried about performance fall-off, particularly on the laptops.

I lurk in reddit.com/r/applehelp, trying to help other Apple users. Just today someone posted about having upgraded to Catalina and now trying to re-download Catalina again from the app store to make a USB installer (they forgot the first time). This second installer would download, give them an error, and erase the download. I passed on this article, and they used the new Catalina ability to “fetch” the installer(s), and this worked for them. So I was able to pass on your great article so someone immediately!

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Many thanks Al, downloading Mojave from the (http://itunes.apple.com) link you provided worked!

Great Article, I’ve been able to download ALL the installers 10.10 to 10.15 and make them all work EXCEPT for the Sierra Installer! I’ve tried several times on several Macs and can not make an external installer. I’m using Install Disk Creator and I’ve also tried DiskMakerX. Just gives an error when trying to make the installer.

Anyone have any advice?

Thank you.

More from Der Flounder. Apple has been having trouble getting all these things reposted properly, so if something didn’t work, try again later.

You could always just turn dark mode off…

The day the TidBITS article appeared I tried downloading the installers and had problems downloading the ones from the Mac App Store. I reported the screwup of the missing archived macOS installers to a senior AppleCare advisor. Sure enough, he, too could not download them from the Mac App Store. He agreed it was screwed up and reported it to engineering.

I received an email from the senior AppleCare advisor today:

‘‘I wanted to reach out to let you know that I received an update to our case. The installer for macOS High Sierra was being updated when you were attempting to download. You should now be able to download it and any other update after as well. Please let me know if you are successful with downloading.’’

I was also able to download both the High Sierra and Mojave installer from the Mac App Store. And for good measure I re-downloaded the Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra installers.

Haven’t tried installing them though. Hope I never have to.

I’m in exactly the same situation, except I also tried the older Terminal command to accomplish this and even that failed.

I did all that in Catalina, so I’m next going to try those methods in some other OS, starting with Sierra.

David, would you please post the URL for that site?

They appear to all have been fixed now. Mostly problems with the CDN mirrors, I’m told. In any case I haven’t had any more problems for the last couple of days now with all the links listed in the article.