macOS 11.1 update hanging

Your hardware and software is fine. I would make sure you have all external devices unplugged, hold the power button until the computer turns off, then wait 10 seconds and turn it back on. I am not sure, but I do believe when that the hang is a hang during OS install, is due to doing checking out for errors before installing. When you restart by theory, that should resolve it. If restarting doesn't work, turn the laptop off, wait ten seconds and then restart while holding down Command-Option/Alt-R keys which will put you in recovery mode and boot the computer from the internet. Once booted from the internet, use Disk Utility to repair the disk. DO NOT ERASE, just repair, then restart and see if the install will finish.

Thanks for that, Jeffdoehring. I was having the exact same problem as Jan Weiss, on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro. I followed your advice on recovering from the Internet using Option-Command-R and this worked flawlessly. I did not need to use Disk Utility following the recovery as the OS 11.1 update was included in the Big Sur recovery download. So, thank you, I certainly appreciate your input.

No such luck for me. I even did the boot into recovery twice. The second time, I ran the repair disk on everything, no errors at all.

after restart, install still hangs once it gets to 10 min remaining on preparing. I left it there to see if it ends at some point

Restart definitely did not help. The upgrade got stuck in the same place saying it was preparing(10 min estimate). So I used command option r. Boot from internet took 8 mins. Then I got to menu where can run disk utility. I don’t see a repair but ‘first aid’ which ran on base. Was ok. From there restart. But 11.1 not installed. Will try without external drives. Help.

I continue with my problems. I still can't update. I've entered into recovery mode 3 times. Each time, after I enter recovery mode, I run disk utility and run FirstAid on every volume there is; the disk itself, the hd data volume, an update volume.

I do not get any errors.

After I restart, I get the notification of the 11.1 update, I click to proceed and after the download, it still gets stuck at 10 mins left on preparing.

If I open Activity Monitor, the process com.softwareupdate is consuming over 100% cpu, fans are running high.

I'm stuck and don't know what else to do.

I have this problem with both my MacBook Pro Intel 2020 and iMac 2019. Both download, stop at 15 minutes remaining, and after a few minutes I get the error unable to download. Very frustrating, first time I've had any problems with a MacOS update.....

This is the first time I saw it go from 10 minutes to 6 to 5minutes. It stayed on five minutes probably about 30 minutes. But then it told me that it was going to reboot. It has been installing. So we will see. What a long process

I've had exactly the same problem on 2 out of 3 Macs. Late 2014 27" iMac and 2020 MacBook Air (Intel) both failed. Early 2015 MacBook update without problems. The MacBook Air was migrated from the MacBook earlier this year so they are essentially identical in terms of apps and data. A friends 2020 MacBook Air (Intel) updated automatically without incident. In the two that failed to update I had the symptoms described above - freezing late in the upgrade process. In both cases booting into Recovery and installing the OS again (while retaining data) DID NOT fix the issue. After the installation both systems rebooted back into what looked like an update process and hung again. In both cases I WAS able to boot in Safe Mode but was unable to get either to boot in normal mode. In both cases I had to format the boot disk, install Big Sur from recovery and then restore settings and data from backup. That fixed both problematic machines and they are both now running 11.1 . This is quite a significant issue if you don't have good backups.

I was able to get my MacBook Pro to update, but I had to do it by taking to my work, and logging onto our network there. It went flawlessly the first time. Tried it a home last night with my iMac and still have the same problem. I'm loathe to trying any of the suggested fixes like booting to recovery mode, etc. This is an OS update and one shouldn't have to jump through hoops to install it. First time I've ever had this type of problem with an update.

I finally was able to get update 11.1 installed!

I tried many times the solutions stated here. Booting into recovery and running disk utility. This I've done daily in hopes that it would finally work. I never got an error on disk utility.

I tried running the update several times, let it run and the furthest it would get to was to 10 mins pending in preparing the update.

I even found a thread somewhere that suggested running the update from terminal, running this command:

sudo sh -c "softwareupdate -ia && reboot", but on this method it would get to a maximum of 75% download.

I tried mostly at home, I even tried at the office, as someone suggested.

Today, I tried going into safe boot, starting the computer while holding the shift key. It finally worked on the second try. It took a very long time doing the download, but then it went to 15min remaining, then quickly to 10, stayed there for a while. I was about to throw in the towel when the progress bar started moving and it went to 5 mins. I decided to let it run to see what would happen and it finally went to done and the popup indicating that the computer would restart in 1 min came up. After that, all went as it should have since the beginning.

I don't know if it was luck, but one thing I did notice while I was in safe boot mode, is that the fans never kicked up as it would each time I ran the update before.

I've never had anything like this happen to me ever, I've been using Mac ever since they migrated to Intel 15 years ago.

Hope this helps someone.

I have exactly the same problem as described in the question above, and have followed this advice. I repaired all of the drives in recovery mode, and restarted - but the download is still getting stuck at '10 minutes remaining'. I have a 13" MacBook Air, which is less than a month old.

Any tips for what to try next?

In the end I contacted Apple support and followed their advice to back my machine up, then wipe the hard drive and reinstall MacOS. That worked and now Big Sur is there and working just fine.

My only words of warning are that it takes a long time (a few hours) and make sure you know your password for your Time Machine back up.

What finally worked for me was booting into Safe Mode.

Safe mode boots your computer with only the basic operating system, no other application/extension, etc will load.

To boot into safe mode, press and hold the shift key (I used the left shift key, but I assume any of them will work), when you are starting up your computer, after the computer boots, you will see a message in red text that says safe mode ( in the menu bar, to the right).

Once I had booted into safe mode, I simply opened system preferences and did the software update as usual. It was taking a long time and was at 10% as had been before, so I cancelled and did everything again. (Boot into safe mode and do the update again). The second time I just left it there and after the 10%, it went to 5%, so I just left it there and eventually it completed the process. At that point it went thru the normal process of rebooting and doing the install.

As I mentioned before, I'm not sure if the solution was booting into safe mode or just simple coincidence that after many attempts, it finally worked.

I was tempted to do a clean install, but got lazy and didn't want to reinstall all software and migrate data from my TimeMachine backup.

I truly hope booting into safe mode will work for you.

Good luck!

George

I am having the same problem. I tried the Option/Command R restart and it brings me to a screen with option to reinstall the operation system or Disk repair, but the mouse becomes disabled and I can't move it to select the Disk repair. How do I get around this?

No go on my Reset, Shut-Down and Repair attempts as well. It looks like Apple has to put some effort into why this update is not installing in its brand new latest Macs. Still hangs at 15 minutes.

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro16,1

Processor Name: 8-Core Intel Core i9

Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 8

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 16 MB

Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

Memory: 32 GB

System Firmware Version: 1554.50.3.0.0 (iBridge: 18.16.12561.0.0,0)

Serial Number (system): C02ZMBFLMD6X

Hardware UUID: 19724726-58EA-5624-9AD6-442C5ABCD9D3

Provisioning UDID: 19724726-58EA-5624-9AD6-442C5ABCD9D3

Activation Lock Status: Disabled