Manual 11.4 Download From Safari

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Level 1

17 points

Manual 11.4 Download From Safari

I just spent 4 hours upgrading 4 iMacs (2015 non-ssd model) to 11.4 through System Preferences. At just under 6 GBs, it took almost an hour to download through the slow office internet. I need to install this upgrade on 10 more computers and it seems to make more sense to download it once (opposed to 10 computers crushing the bandwidth downloading the same file) and distribute to the other workstations. Any way to download the update as a .dmg or .pkg or am I stuck using the built in Software Update procedure? I have done this previous to Big Sur by finding the download on the Apple Support site.

Posted on Jun 1, 2021 11:15 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dialabrain

Level 10

135,947 points

Jun 1, 2021 4:23 PM in response to stevemazich

You should be able to download the full installer from the App Store onto one of the Macs you already updated to Big Sur. Quit the installer once it downloads (12.6GBs). It will be in the Applications folder named "Install macOS Big Sur". Copy that to a flash drive, then copy the installer to each Mac, then run it.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,144 points

Jun 1, 2021 4:06 PM in response to stevemazich

They stopped posting the updates.

You can try Content Caching, but not sure how well it works.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-caching-on-mac-mchl9388ba1b/mac

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Answer 3

dialabrain

Level 10

135,947 points

Jun 1, 2021 4:46 PM in response to stevemazich

Just to add, you could do what I do with 5 Macs to upgrade. Update two at a time. But I do have a 1Gb/s connection so the download only takes a couple minutes. Once it downloads and switches to "Preparing the update", I forget the exact wording, you can start the next two, and so on.

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Answer 4

stevemazich Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 2, 2021 1:29 PM in response to Barney-15E

I thought that might be the case. I remember doing this recently, I want to say for Catalina, but maybe it was prior to macOS. I don't want to mess with content cashing but thank you for the suggestion. I'll go with the full installer I think.

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Answer 5

stevemazich Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 2, 2021 1:31 PM in response to dialabrain

That was my plan except I was hoping to just use the update pkg rather than the full installer but it seems to take the same amount of time to run the update as it does to install the OS. Thanks again.

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