Is it possible for me to download El Capitan installer on 10.13?

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Level 1

19 points

Is it possible for me to download El Capitan installer on 10.13?

Hello

I need to create a bootable thumb drive with El Capitan installer to resurrect a Mac which can no longer start.

I'm on another Mac with High Sierra, so when I'm trying to download El Capitan from Mac App Store's "purchases" section it fails with the message "This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer." This prevents me from creating the drive to restore another Mac, and because it is an older model I can't use anything higher than El Capitan.

Is there any other way to download El Capitan installer or do I have to resort to torrents to find it?

Posted on Dec 11, 2017 11:34 AM

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Answer 1

VikWorldwide Author

Level 1

19 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:30 PM in response to Tesserax

Thank you. Unfortunately that article don't answer my question where to download older OS when App Store won't do it.

Also, I checked developer downloads, and there are versions of older OSes, but only those which were released not through App Store. So while I can download very old version, El Capitan is not within my reach due to the App Store.

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

148,441 points

Dec 11, 2017 11:40 AM in response to VikWorldwide

You may find the following article helpful: How to download old versions of Mac OS X - Macworld

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

148,441 points

Dec 11, 2017 2:10 PM in response to VikWorldwide

Those would be the only way Apple provides them and mainly through the App Store where you had previously purchased it or kept copies of the installers along the way. Sorry!

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Answer 4

VikWorldwide Author

Level 1

19 points

Dec 12, 2017 4:42 AM in response to Tesserax

Thank you.

In the end I was able to find an older Mac and download El Capitan installer.

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