Install El Capitan From Dmg

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Scroll down to “Update and Solution” to see how to get this to work.

For downloading macOS X El Capitan, simply click the link below we have provided. MacOS X El Capitan Final DMG – This is the direct link for downloading macOS X El Capitan DMG which is only for Mac users and you can also download macOS X El Capitan DMG from Windows or Linux. This is download Mac OS X El Capitan DMG file. A little bit more clarification on the process. Apple has now made the El Capitan file from their website into a.dmg file. In order to use this file to create a bootable drive, you must do these steps before you are able to use the createinstallmedia command.

Apple recently released new installers for Mac OS X/OS X/mac OS to deal with expired certificates:

Three of the six are links to the Mac App Store:

Install El Capitan From Dmg

The other three are URLs to download DMGs:

  • macOS Sierra – InstallOS.dmg
  • OS X El Capitan – InstallMacOSX.dmg
  • OS X Yosemite – InstallMacOSX.dmg

Today I tried (and failed) to create a new Virtual Machine in either Parallels or VMware Fusion using one of these DMGs, specifically, the El Capitan one.

I will explain what I did, and where I got stuck, in the hopes that someone else might figure out what I did wrong and point me in the right direction.

Download the DMG

Apple has created three DMGs for Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra, but couldn’t be bothered to give them useful names, so Yosemite and El Capitan are called ‘InstallMacOSX.dmg’ and Sierra is ‘InstallOS.dmg’.

Likewise the DMGs aren’t named usefully when you mount them either, so make sure you name the DMGs well when you download them to avoid confusion. Here’s how to download it and rename it at the same time

Mount the DMG

Open the ‘~/Downloads/InstallElCapitan.dmg’

That will leave you with

“/Volumes/Install OS X/InstallMacOSX.pkg”

Install El Capitan Download

Extract the App

Install El Capitan Dmg Download

Don’t try to install from that .pkg file, it probably won’t work unless the Mac you’re using is capable of running El Capitan:

Instead, open it with Suspicious Package which will let you examine the contents of the .pkg file, as shown here:

Note the area in the red box. Obviously that’s not the full installer, despite the .dmg being over 6 GB. But let’s export it anyway:

Save it to /Applications/ (or wherever you prefer, but that’s where I’ll assume it is for the rest of these instructions).

Don’t eject “/Volumes/Install OS X/InstallMacOSX.pkg” yet, we still need to get the actual .dmg from it.

Get the other DMG

Download The Archive Browser if you don’t already have it (it’s free!) and use it to open “/Volumes/Install OS X/InstallMacOSX.pkg”.

It will look like this:

Click on the triangle to the left of “InstallMaxOSX.pkg” to reveal its contents, and select the “InstallESD.dmg” file from it.

Once it is selected, choose “Extract Selected” from the bottom-left. Save it to ~/Downloads/ (it won’t be staying there long).

Ok, this part could be confusing…

When The Archive Browser exports the file, it will not just export the “InstallESD.dmg” file. First it creates a folder “InstallMacOSX” and then it created “InstallMacOSX.pkg” inside that folder, and the “InstallESD.dmg” file is put inside the .pkg… but you can’t see it, because the .pkg file won’t let you open it.

That’s OK, because we’re going to use Terminal.app to move the file into place anyway.

First we need to create a directory inside the ‘Install OS X El Capitan.app’ which we previously saved to /Applications/. We’re going to use the same folder for two commands and we want to make sure we get it exactly right both times, so we’ll make it a variable:

Then use the variable with mkdir to create the folder:

and then we need to move the “InstallESD.dmg” file into that folder

Note: you probably want to trash the ‘~/Downloads/InstallMacOSX/InstallMacOSX.pkg’ (and its parent folder) now that it is empty, to avoid confusion later

Now if you look at the ‘Install OS X El Capitan.app’ in the Finder, it should show itself as 6.21 GB:

So close, and yet…

VMWare was willing to start trying to make a virtual machine using the app, but it failed when it came to the actual installation part:

I don’t know what to try next. Parallels would not use either the ‘Install OS X El Capitan.app’ or the ‘InstallESD.dmg’ to try to create a new virtual machine.

Update and Solution

I posted a question on the VMware Fusion support forum asking how to do this, and someone came up with a very clever solution, which I will replicate here in case others are interested. The idea is simple, but I never would have thought of it.

  1. Create a virtual machine of any version of macOS, even the current version that you are using on your Mac.

  2. Inside the VM, download the .dmg (see below) and mount it.

  3. Launch the .pkg inside the .dmg.

  4. The .pkg seems to understand that it is inside a VM, and will install the app, which it would not do outside of the VM. Note that the Installer.app says that it will only take a few megabytes, but that is incorrect.

  5. Find the “Install OS X El Capitan.app” (or whatever the app name is) in the /Applications/ folder inside the VM. It should be over 6 GB in size.

  6. Copy the “Install….app” from the VM out to your actual Mac.

  7. Create a new VM using the “Install….app” from the /Applications/ folder on your Mac.

Step #4 is the part that I never would have guessed. The .pkg would not install the app outside of a VM, but will install it inside of a VM.

This worked perfectly with the El Capitan .dmg file, and I’m currently doing the same with Yosemite and Sierra. Then I’ll try the older versions of Mac OS X from old installers that I have from before they disappeared from Apple’s servers.

Update 2

Turns out that Rich Trouton wrote about this technique back in early 2017:

But I wasn’t working with VMs at the time, so I must not not stored that in my long-term memory.

Update 3

I had saved the older installers for Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks, which are no longer available for download.

Each of them still installed as a VM. Apparently they were not signed with the certificates that expired.

Older versions of Mac OS X (10.6.8 and before) are not available to virtualize.

These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.

What you need to create a bootable installer

  • A USB flash drive or other secondary volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, with at least 14GB of available storage
  • A downloaded installer for macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, or El Capitan

Download macOS

  • Download: macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, or macOS High Sierra
    These download to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS [version name]. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
  • Download: OS X El Capitan
    This downloads as a disk image named InstallMacOSX.dmg. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.

Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

  1. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer.
  2. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  3. Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these commands with the name of your volume.

Big Sur:*

Catalina:*

Mojave:*

High Sierra:*

El Capitan:

* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath argument and installer path, similar to the way this is done in the command for El Capitan.


After typing the command:

Install El Capitan From Dmg Software

  1. Press Return to enter the command.
  2. When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
  3. When prompted, type Y to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the volume is erased.
  4. After the volume is erased, you may see an alert that Terminal would like to access files on a removable volume. Click OK to allow the copy to proceed.
  5. When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Big Sur. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.

Use the bootable installer

Determine whether you're using a Mac with Apple silicon, then follow the appropriate steps:

Apple silicon

  1. Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing.
  2. Turn on your Mac and continue to hold the power button until you see the startup options window, which shows your bootable volumes.
  3. Select the volume containing the bootable installer, then click Continue.
  4. When the macOS installer opens, follow the onscreen instructions.

Intel processor

  1. Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing.
  2. Press and hold the Option (Alt) ⌥ key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.
  3. Release the Option key when you see a dark screen showing your bootable volumes.
  4. Select the volume containing the bootable installer. Then click the up arrow or press Return.
    If you can't start up from the bootable installer, make sure that the External Boot setting in Startup Security Utility is set to allow booting from external media.
  5. Choose your language, if prompted.
  6. Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.

Install El Capitan From Dmg

Learn more

A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the internet, but it does require an internet connection to get firmware and other information specific to the Mac model.

For information about the createinstallmedia command and the arguments you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter the appropriate path in Terminal: