Can I use macOS Recovery to install High Sierra?

Question

Level 1

8 points

Can I use macOS Recovery to install High Sierra?

I attempted an upgrade from the App Store yesterday, but got stuck at around 3/4 of the way. Still had a couple of minutes left, but I figured it was stuck and pressed the power button.

Now my Mac will boot directly into Bootcamp and will not display the Mac drive when I hold Option booting up. I figured this was the time to reinstall macOS through Recovery, preferably the latest version.

Turns out that even after pressing Option+Command+R the Recovery option to install macOS will open the installer for Yosemite (my Mac is a late 2014, I believe).

According to the documentation, pressing Option+Command+R would make this option open the installer for the latest compatible macOS version, i.e. macOS High Sierra, right?

Posted on Sep 26, 2017 6:59 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,398 points

Sep 26, 2017 9:30 AM in response to ravemir

Option+command+R is Internet Recovery, and it will only fetch the version of OS X/macOS that originally shipped on the Mac. The exception are the Macs that originally shipped with a recovery DVD prior to Lion, or earlier Macs that lack the firmware update to boot into Internet Recovery.

Command+R is just Recovery, and will attempt to boot from your Sierra Recovery partition. This will only allow you to reinstall Sierra, not High Sierra.

Re-read that link that you provided. It very clearly spells out that nothing on that page allows you to install High Sierra. You must obtain it from the App Store, and manually start it.

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Answer 2

muhelen

Level 1

4 points

Oct 5, 2017 12:52 AM in response to ravemir

You need to create a bootable USB macOS High Sierra installer drive before can use Recovery. More info

https://www.google.com.my/amp/s/www.macworld.com/article/3204672/macs/how-to-cre ate-a-bootable-macos-high-sierra-installer-drive.amp.html

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Answer 3

ravemir Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 26, 2017 8:36 AM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Well, according to the table on this page, there should be a way to install the latest version, if I had macOS Sierra installed...but I probably don't, since I corrupted my partition. 😕

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Answer 4

ravemir Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 26, 2017 10:11 AM in response to VikingOSX

I guess "Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.²" doesn't include it then (I saw the footnote, but read it as 'Sierra introduced this feature, so you should have it if you have upgraded previously').

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Answer 5

Sep 26, 2017 7:07 AM in response to ravemir

You can't use recovery mode to install High Sierra.

High Sierra must have been installed when you purchased the machine.

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