GarageBand can’t be installed on “Macintosh HD” because macOS version 11 or later is required.

Users are reporting that the Catalina 10.15.7 Security Update released yesterday has cleared the issue. Make sure your Catalina is fully up-to-date.

I updated to Big Sur after a bit of difficulty with the download, and now Garage Band has updated to the latest version. However, now Pages, Numbers and Keynote are crashing and won't open existing documents, so be careful what you trade for with the update to Big Sur right now! HAVE A GREAT DAY!

I have had similar problems with art applications that would not run on El Capitan. I bought an external hard drive that was then set up to boot from Mojave (Mojave had to be installed on the external hard drive), and when I want to use my art app, I have to boot from the external hard drive running Mojave. You might do the same, except you would still have to get an older version of GarageBand that will run on Mojave and install it on that external drive. That way, you could update to Big Sur operating system on the main computer, and boot from the Mojave external hard drive to run GarageBand. It's not fun, but it seems to be the only way???

Well, we Catalina users ARE seeing the update alert in the App Store even though it shouldn’t be showing up for us. I personally think it’s a glitch in the App Store at this point. Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iMovie updated okay.

And as you should know more than a few users will freak out over that red dot showing an update is available when it is clearly not.

The backup versions don't work. I've tried reinstalling Garageband from my backup and it appears to have worked until you start it up when it automatically connects to apple and starts to update itself, discovers you don't have Big Sur and crashes.

I am not LeVeau. @LeVeau - there is a security update to 10.15.7 but it doesn't get a new leaf number. I haven't applied it yet but I presume, as stated by Ikrupp that it fixes the issue. These minor updates that don't get numbers are confusing. The Update is labelled 2020-001 10.15.7. Personally I would have expected it to be labelled 10.15.7.001 or 10.15.7.001-2020 but who knows the logic here, it doesn't seem to be semantic numbering beyond the .7

andy

Well - I have now installed the security update on both of my macbooks. They are both 2012 so can't run Big Sur. On one of them (a shiny) it fixed the problem, on the other (an anti-glare with higher resolution) it didn't.

They have the same graphics (Intel + NVIDIA) with the same configuration details, only the display resolution is different.

I am unsurprised that some say the security patch fixes it and some say it doesn't.

Go figure.

andy

I've spent two hours on the phone with Apple support today after having the same issue. They don't know what the F is going on. The guy was trying to tell me OS 11 was the same as 10.11. He made me reinstall my operating system and promised it would fix the issue. Guess what? IT DIDN'T!!! I'm on Mojave 10.14.6 On the Garageband page it now says 'requires 11.0 or later'. Can someone please tell me how I update Garageband to an earlier version than what is on the App Store. I was on 2013 version - which I've now deleted because the Apple guy told me to and now I can't download anything. I'm having the same issue with Numbers. Here's a fun doodle I drew whilst on the call:

And none of this discussion helps if you have a Catalina MBP that cannot update to Big Sur. I have two from 2012 - they are very adequate for my purposes, they are maximally-expanded and were the most powerful I could get at that time and they still work great. Update tells me to update GarageBand. But trying to update it tells me I can't because it only runs on MacOS 11. But MacOS 11 DOESN'T RUN ON 2012 Macbooks. I'm not expecting to upgrade my hardware for another 2 or 3 years (these are great laptops and I don't have the money)

I've encountered the same issue when iOS went to 64 bits. Feels like a policy decision to me - get the customers to upgrade their hardware - its not beyong the wit of man to put in a switch to implement "stop telling me about this one but carry on telling me about other updates".

andy

Ouch - that sounds painful! I don't want to update to Big Sur as it won't yet work with other programs I'm running. I want Apple to stop trying to make us buy new computers and update when we've already spent a month's wages on the hardware in the first place, which is still working except for their forced upgrades and making it impossible to find compatible older versions. All I want from Apple is a .dmg for a version of Garageband that is one or two before this latest one.

And you don't plan to move to BS (hmm .. apple didn't think too deeply about that acronym did they - at least in the UK - hope I'm not censored for making jokes about Apple) ?

Must be a generic flaw not a hardware-specific one then ... the other difference between my two machines is that one was an american machine (has a US keyboard), the one that still has the GB issue is a UK machine. The inside hardware is the same.

andy

I think it's very poor that apple isn't properly supporting updates on Catalina. It's not That old, and in the audio world so many other plugins/audio interfaces are not immediately upgradeable or have issues that take time to work out the kinks.

Thank you, Barbara.

I'll wait a few weeks or months before upgrading to Big Sur.

Nope. I'm on 10.15.7, and Garage Band still appears as an update.