Databases, Systems & Networks

To access some specialized Mac features you’ll need to hold down one or more keys during startup. If you’re having trouble with your Mac, this can be a great way to troubleshoot and analyze your options.

To use any of these boot keys, hold down the listed key combo as soon as you press your Mac’s power button. If you’re restarting your Mac, press and hold the keys immediately after your Mac begins to restart. Don’t release the keys until you see the described behavior.

macOS Boot Options

Shift: Start your Mac in Safe Mode. Since safe mode only loads essential software, you can determine whether a system process or a user-installed application is causing your problem.

Option: Boot into Startup Manager. From here you can select different startup disks if any bootable partitions are available.

Command + R: Boot into Recovery Mode. Recovery Mode is macOS’s powerful recovery suite with a bunch of options for saving or wiping your Mac. You can use it to reinstall macOS, restore from a Time Machine backup or use Disk Utility to repair or format your hard drive.

Shift + Command + Option + R: Start in Internet Recovery Mode, skipping your system’s hard drive. This allows you to reinstall the build of macOS that came with your computer from the factory. macOS might do this one on its own if your installation is so messed up that you can’t boot into Recovery Mode.

Command + S: Start in single user, command-line-only mode. This is useful for running diagnostic Terminal commands or fsck, but it can’t do much beyond that.

Command + V: Boot in verbose mode. This mode displays logging and diagnostic messages as your Macboots. If your Mac is showing the Apple logo but failing to start completely, try this step to see where in the boot process the error occurs.

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Many Mac users who are attempting to download macOS High Sierra from the Mac App Store will find that a small 19 MB version of “Install macOS High Sierra.app” downloads to the /Applications folder of the target Mac, rather than the complete 5.2 GB Installer application for macOS High Sierra. This is annoying because it prevents a single download from being used on multiple computers, plus the small installer requires an internet connection during usage to download the rest of the High Sierra update files. Additionally, the tiny 19 MB incomplete installer prevents users from being able to create a macOS High Sierra USB installer drive or other custom update options available through the command line, like skipping the APFS update.

This tutorial will show you a workaround trick that allows Mac users to download the full macOS High Sierra “Install macOS High Sierra.app” file at 5.2 GB with the complete installer tool set and all dmg files and associated Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/ tools, rather than the tiny incomplete truncated installer at 19 MB.

How to Download the Full “Install macOS High Sierra.app” Application

Warning: this method relies on a third party tool from an unverified third party source, if you are not comfortable with using unvetted and unverified software, and if you do not understand the risks associated with using potentially dubious software, do not follow this process. This is for advanced users only.

1. 1. Go to dosdude1.com here and download the High Sierra patcher application*
   2. Launch “MacOS High Sierra Patcher” and ignore everything about patching, instead pull down the “Tools” menu and choose “Download MacOS High Sierra”

1. 1. Confirm that you want to download the complete macOS High Sierra install application, and then point it to a location to save on the local hard drive

1. 1. The patcher app will notify you when the download is complete, when it is done downloading quit out of the patcher app

1. 1. Locate the “Install macOS High Sierra.app” file you downloaded, it will be the complete installer application with the full Contents/Resources/ toolkit available

* The “macOS High Sierra Patcher” application is intended for those with unsupported Macs and Hackintosh users, but any Mac user can use the app to be able to download the complete installer file from Apple servers. The source of this patcher application is a MacRumors Forums

You can confirm that you have the complete Install macOS High Sierra.app application by getting info on the file, the complete installer should be around 5.2 GB rather than the tiny 19 MB incomplete installer that requires additional downloads.

Why do some users get a small incomplete version of macOS High Sierra installer from the App Store?

This is not yet known, but it happens with the final version of macOS High Sierra installer as well as with some of the beta versions.

It is unclear why some users will get a 19MB version of “Install macOS High Sierra.app” when downloaded from the App Store, while others users will get the complete 5.2GB version of “Install macOS High Sierra.app” when downloading from the App Store. Interestingly, once a user ends up with the 19 MB version of the incomplete installer, that seems to be the only thing that will download for that user regardless of how many times the incomplete installer app is deleted and re downloaded.

The installer size and completeness inconsistency appears random, and has no relation to disk space, beta enrollment, software catalog, and other theories seem to be incorrect as well.

Advanced Mac users may find it useful to run macOS or Mac OS X in a virtual machine atop their existing Mac operating system. Creating a virtual machine for Mac OS is now easier than ever before, and we’ll show you how to set up easy Mac virtual machines on a Mac.

For some quick background, virtualization allows you to run another operating system in a confined virtual machine atop an existing operating system through an application layer. This means there is no disk partitioning involved, the virtualized operating system runs just like any other application on your computer. We have covered this broad topic many times before for purposes like running Windows 10 on a Mac with a VM, to running Ubuntu Linux in VirtualBox, to Snow Leopard in a VM, and others. In the guide here, we will be creating a Macintosh virtual machine for running Mac OS on top of Mac OS, which can be helpful for testing out different apps and operating system versions, amongst other purposes.

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Apple uses its App Store to distribute its software, like new Mac operating systems. It’s convenient, but sometimes it can take a while for a download to finish. And if you have multiple Macs, it’s inefficient to download the new OS to each and every Mac.

That’s why I like to make a bootable external drive for the sole purpose of installing the Mac operating system. When I need to tend to a bunch of Macs, it’s much faster to use a bootable drive instead of going to each Mac, launching the App Store, searching for the operating system, downloading it (after entering my Apple ID), and then running the installer.

You can create a bootable USB flash drive with the macOS Sierra installer that’s now available. The installer software will take up nearly 5GB of storage space. Here’s how to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive.

Macworld also has bootable-install-drive instructions for El Capitan (OS X 10.11), Yosemite (OS X 10.10), Mavericks (OS X 10.9), Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), and Lion (OS X 10.7).

Download the macOS Sierra installer

Launch the App Store app, then look for macOS Sierra in the store. (Here’s a link.) Click on the Download button, and your Mac will download the installer to your Applications folder. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer.

If you’ve already upgraded your Mac to Sierra, the installer is removed from the Applications folder. You can download it again if you go to Purchased in the App Store. Look for macOS Sierra in the list of apps that you’ve bought, and click on the Download button. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer.

Lire la suite…