{"id":26895,"date":"2019-10-15T13:46:09","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T17:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=26895"},"modified":"2021-12-20T16:15:43","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T21:15:43","slug":"catalina-software-update-can-download-old-installers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/15\/catalina-software-update-can-download-old-installers\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalina &ldquo;softwareupdate&rdquo; Can Download Old Installers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scriptingosx.com\/2019\/10\/download-a-full-install-macos-app-with-softwareupdate-in-catalina\/\">Armin Briegel<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/scriptingosx.com\/2019\/10\/download-a-full-install-macos-app-with-softwareupdate-in-catalina\/\">\n<p>The <code>softwareupdate<\/code> command has gained a new option in Catalina:<\/p>\n<pre>% softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer<\/pre>\n<p>Will download the latest &lsquo;Install macOS&rsquo; application to this Mac&rsquo;s <code>\/Applications<\/code> folder. This is extremely useful for many admin tasks.<\/p>\n<p>The <code>--fetch-full-installer<\/code> flag has a sub-flag: <code>--full-installer-version<\/code> which allows you to download a specific version.<\/p>\n<pre>% softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Oddly, specifying either <code>10.14<\/code> or <code>10.14.0<\/code> works, but to download Catalina you need to specify <code>10.15<\/code> or else it will fail with an &ldquo;Update not found&rdquo; error.<\/p>\n\n<p>These installers can be used with <a href=\"https:\/\/c-command.com\/dropdmg\/\">DropDMG<\/a>&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/c-command.com\/dropdmg\/help\/create-macos-install-di\">Create macOS Install Disk<\/a> command.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/12\/waiting-to-update-to-catalina\/\">Waiting to Update to Catalina<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/28\/installing-old-versions-of-macos\/\">Installing Old Versions of macOS<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"catalina-software-update-can-download-old-installers-update-2019-10-16\">Update (2019-10-16): There are <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NSExceptional\/status\/1184199397011329030\">some<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/armadsen\/status\/1184204375658360832\">questions<\/a> about which old versions this works for.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"catalina-software-update-can-download-old-installers-update-2020-06-01\">Update (2020-06-01): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/helje5\/status\/1267451132475047939\">Helge He&szlig;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/helje5\/status\/1267451132475047939\">\n<p>I was refusing to install Catalina on my machines for a loong time, living on 10.14. Eventually I did, Xcode 11.4 told me I had to.<\/p>\n<p>You can&rsquo;t imagine how hard it is to rebuild a working 10.14 dev install. No simple &ldquo;download installer and put it on a partition&rdquo; &#x1F937;&#x200D;&#x2640;&#xFE0F; Wasted hours.<\/p><p>A problem is that the Mojave installer doesn&rsquo;t run on Catalina, can&rsquo;t be used to install it on a different partition from within 10.15. And the rescue system brings up 10.15 (or 10.10). So I&rsquo;m trying to go with the external boot volume thing next &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/10\/how-to-downgrade-a-new-mac-to-mojave-from-catalina\/\">How to Downgrade a New Mac to Mojave From Catalina<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/25\/xcode-11-4-and-swift-5-2-released\/\">Xcode 11.4 and Swift 5.2<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"catalina-software-update-can-download-old-installers-update-2021-12-20\">Update (2021-12-20): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2021\/12\/20\/how-to-get-an-old-version-of-macos-os-x-and-xcode\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Armin Briegel: The softwareupdate command has gained a new option in Catalina: % softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer Will download the latest &lsquo;Install macOS&rsquo; application to this Mac&rsquo;s \/Applications folder. This is extremely useful for many admin tasks. The --fetch-full-installer flag has a sub-flag: --full-installer-version which allows you to download a specific version. % softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-10-15T17:46:14Z","apple_news_api_id":"e17aa753-9bbe-4e45-b663-bbb8f7e6c501","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-12-20T21:15:46Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A4XqnU5u-TkW2Y7u49-bFAQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[371,1780,30,1666,2087],"class_list":["post-26895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-dropdmg","tag-installer","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-15","tag-software-update"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26895"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34506,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26895\/revisions\/34506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}