How to get a standalone installer for Mojave?

GustavoPi wrote:

I have now Catalina in my MacBook Pro 2012. I am aware is not elegible for the next system, but Catalina have several disavantages for me now, it' slower, unstable, full of glitches and won't run 32 bit apps. I won't work with Catalina anymore, and my first choice is Mojave.

Just to be clear - I dont want to polemize the subject, Catalina is not good FOR ME. And I am trying since .0 version, so this step is done, I will leave Catalina no matter what.

But I can't find an installer. many post have this link: How to upgrade to macOS Mojave - Apple Support that have a link of Mojave that will open the System Preferences and lead to an error, the same as to try to find it in App Store. It seems to be available only as update, but I need the standalone installer to a clean install. How can I get it?

Even running Cataliana on your MBP 2012, you should have access to the installer from termianal.

Try the download from the Terminal.app, copy and paste:

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

then proceed... How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Creating the USBinstaller, you then will have the ability to boot from the USBinstaller>Disk Utility> to erase/format/initialize the internal HD/SSD, before you an succesfully reinstall the older Mojave. Restore your user data form a backup.

I have a 2019 27" iMac that came with OS Mojave. As with my previous three iMacs, I have partitioned the fusion drive, in this case, to three partitions. The reason I do this is so that I can install an OS to suit the applications I run. On one other partition I have installed OS Catalina so that I can test apps, and compare working on other OS's. I also have as back ups, bootable OS's on USB for both Mojave and Catalina. If there are issues, it is easier to reinstall an OS rather than mess around wth time machine which I have never used and never will until some one can prove to me its worth. A classic point is the number of posts on this forum with issues of deleted OS's and moving forward and back to a previous OS and retaining data.

About every six months I update the bootable USB's to make sure they are operational if I need them.

Now to your issue:

The link that Kappy posted is correct and it works, taking you to the Apps store. But; If your computer is booted in Catalina and you ask to download Mojave, it will search for an update and lead you straight to a Catalina download. If the computer is booted in Mojave it will search for an update and let you down load Mojave or Catalina. I have tried several times while booted in Catalina but it will not let me select OS Mojave.

I am sure you are going to have to boot from a machine with Mojave to download a Mojave installer.

This may or may not work in your situation but I hope you get the results you are looking for.

Long live Macs.

GustavoPi wrote:

This will return the following error in Terminal:

SUPreferenceManager: Failed to set object of class: __NSCFConstantString for key: LastRecommendedMajorOSBundleIdentifier with error: Error Domain=SUPreferenceManagerErrorDomain Code=1 "(null)"

Too bad. I have seen this error only on a new machine that shipped with Catalina pre-installed, and unable to access the older Mojave.

However, on my old mid-2012 MBP running Catalina the terminal command executed without failure a successful 10.14.6 download just two days ago.

Mysteries abound...

Boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and try downloading and installing the full installer from there.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

How much free space do you have on your boot drive?

Regarding the lag log into another admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac,  and see if the problem persists. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).

Then boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

GustavoPi wrote:

Well, I will keep this threat opened still because I could download actually, but there is some issues, the first one is I lost the track of what I did! I should have a copy of Terminal, sorry! But I will at list tell what I know so far.

You got to do it in Terminal, there is no working link anymore. There is some prescriptions around the web as this one: https://osxdaily.com/2020/04/13/how-download-full-macos-installer-terminal/

Might work for some, and not for others, that's IT life, but this is the right path.

The first command line prescription I got from this thread and didn't work.

Does not seem to clarify anything since your link gives the exact same command line as presented above, side by side comparison :

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

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

There are numerous reports over the last month (±) of errors when trying to download OS installers with FireFox. If that is what you tried, use Safari to get the file,