Updating to MacOs Sonoma Stuck at 5 minutes

This is a common issue that many users have faced. The update process may take longer than expected, even when it says “About 5 minutes remaining”. This is because the update is not only downloading the content, but also preparing and installing the OS.

Some possible solutions that you can try are:

• Wait patiently. The update may eventually complete, even if it takes more than an hour. Do not restart your Mac or use it while the update is in progress.
• Empty your trash bin. Some of my friends recommended that this helped them speed up the update process.
• Install the update from Safe Mode. This can help you troubleshoot if there is a software problem that is causing the update to fail. To do this, you need to shut down your Mac, turn it on and then immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the login window. Then, you can install the update from the System Preferences app. After the update is done, you can restart your Mac normally.

I hope this helps you resolve your issue. If not, you may need to check try more troubleshooting steps like here I found this, in which this issue is explained in detail and the provided 8 ways to fix macOS Sonoma stuck at 5 minutes remaining.

My Mac screen says it has been "Preparing macOS Sonoma 14.1/About 20 minutes remaining" for over 12 hours.

Well, it seems they haven't been able to fix that bug yet, it's Dec. 11th and I'm still having the same problem here...

Empty the trash bin and continue...it worked within minutes!

I just installed Sonoma yesterday, on a 14" M1 Pro. It also sat at the 5 min mark for at least half an hour, but it eventually completed. This mismatch between the promised time to install and the real time has happened with almost every new OS installation I've done (mostly on a 2013 MBP), so I wasn't worried.

My apple m1 ventura 13.5 also got stuck at "About 5 minutes remaining"; but it completed the download after ~1.5 hours and prompted to do the actual update (my network is at ~550mbps on my apple devices and upwards of 900mbps for devices with ethernet, not sure why this download took so long). It then got stuck at "5 minutes remaining" again on the actual update, this time it only took ~50 minutes to complete.

Same here on a Macbook Air M1.

I did that too. After more than 1.5 hrs I went to sleep. This morning it seemed completed but I tried to sign in but still waiting for browser to stop churning. Help!!!!

Thank you so much! I’ve been trying to install this since it became available but it would just barely start and then stall out. I’ve emptied the trash, shut it down and then opened while holding the shift key. I’ve gotten much further than ever before… it now says “about 30 minutes remaining “, so we’ll see. Fingers crossed.

Hope that this update is worth all this trouble but it doesn’t seem to bode well.

Even better, It's almost 2 months later and I'm getting the same issue

Currently going on two hours here. Had to force restart and now I’m back to square one with the download page saying ‘52 mins remaining…’

This has been the worst/slowest update process yet and has me reconsidering my choice to use a Mac computer. Thank god Black Friday is soon…

I don't think it has to do with downloading. When I watch the network traffic on Activity Monitor, that usually goes pretty quick: the traffic is high and then drops to virtually nothing in a few minutes. The installer must be actually "preparing" the OS. Why that takes so long is a mystery for Apple's software folks to explain.

If any of the previous tips don’t work (they didn’t for me) try this:

* Go here: How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

* Click the App Store link for Sonoma.

* Click Get

It should restart the download, and longer be stuck on preparing afterwards. Worked for me!

Imposaible updating to latest Sonoma 14.0…