- OS X Yosemite for Mac, free and safe download. OS X Yosemite latest version: The latest version of OS X for Mac. This program can no longer be downloaded. Take a look at Mac OS X El Capitan instead.OS X 10.10 Y.
- Nov 10, 2018.
If you’re interested in running Mac OS X, but you don’t want to pay ridiculous prices for a normal Mac, then a Hackintoshjust might be for you. Right now, the newest iteration of OS X is 10.10, known as Yosemite. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install Yosemite on your PC with the nely released “Yosemite Zone” distro, from Niresh.
The advantages of Unibeast vs. Yosemite Zone
Yosemite is a distro, which is a pirated copy of Mac OS X that has been modified to work with a PC. Distros are a popular Hackintosh alternative to Unibeast, a better-known installation tool which requires a retail copy of Mac OS X instead.
Hackintosh Yosemite Installer can be used to install OS X Yosemite On PC without the need of a Mac. For detail Installation Guide and Instruction read: Install Hackintosh Yosemite on PC/Laptop. This Installer supports AMD Processor Pcs Intel Processor including Haswell LGA 2011 X99 Hackintosh Installation HP Processors with Insyde Bios.
Yosemite Zone is essentially just a renamed version of the Niresh distro that we’ve covered previously on this website, except it has been updated to work with Apple’s newest version of Mac OS X. Using Yosemite Zone instead of Unibeast offers a far share of advantages– if you don’t have any qualms with the legal issues regarding distros, they’re actually the most convenient way to set up your Hackintosh:
- You don’t need a real Mac. Unibeast is a Mac app, so you need to have an existing Mac OS X installation for it to work. This usually means that you either have to find a real Mac, or set up a Mac virtual machine. However, with Yosemite Zone, you can just set up everything from a Windows computer.
- The post-installation is easier. By default, Yosemite Zone will automatically install necessary Hackintosh-specific kexts and drivers for your computer when you boot your Mac OS X installation for the first time. Unibeast requires you to do this manually, using the Multibeast tool. While the post-installation in Yosemite Zone isn’t perfect (you’ll probably have to use Multibeast anyways), it’s still a nice convenience.
- You can install it on a hard drive that already has Windows installed. By default, the Mac OS X installer will not work with hard drives that were originally formatted in Windows. Therefore, if your computer’s hard drive already has Windows installed on it, you won’t be able to install Mac OS X on there. Normally, you can bypass this limitation on Unibeast by applying the MBR patch; however, Yosemite Zone does this for you automatically, saving you one extra step.
- Yosemite Zone supports more hardware (including AMD). Normally, computers that use AMD processors are unsupported by Mac OS X. However, Yosemite Zone includes experimental “patched” kernels that may allow Mac OS X to work with these processors regardless.
Interested? Here are the requirements:
- Multibeast (Free): Multibeast is a collection of kext files that your Hackintosh will need to run properly, after the initial installation. Be sure to download the newest version 7 of Multibeast, not the older versions 3, 4, 5, or 6 (which are for Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks respectively).
1a. Create your Yosemite Zone USB drive (Mac)
Follow this step if you’re setting up Niresh on a Mac or existing Hackintosh. Plug your USB drive into Mac OS X, and open Disk Utility (located in Applications->Utilities in your main hard drive). Select your USB drive in the sidebar of Disk Utility and erase the drive, with the “Format” set to “MS-DOS (FAT)”. You can rename the drive any way you want.Next, make sure that your Yosemite Zone disk image file is in the same folder as “Restore Yosemite.pkg”. If “Restore Yosemite.pkg” is still in a ZIP file, double-click that file to unzip it.Double click on “Restore Yosemite.pkg” to start the app. By default, the app will be aimed at your computer’s main hard drive (mine is named “Super Panda” in the screenshot below). You do not want this– instead, click through the installer until you reach the page with the “Change Install Location” button.
From here, change the install location of the app to your USB drive (mine is named “Macaroni” in the screenshot below).
Press the enter/return key. The app will ask for your system password. After you enter your password, it will begin writing the Yosemite Zone disk image onto the USB drive. This will probably take 20-40 minutes, though it may take longer, depending on the speed of your USB drive. Once it finishes, your USB drive will contain a fully bootable version of the OS X Yosemite installer.
NOTE: “Restore Yosemite.pkg” is very glitchy. If you can’t find the “Change Install Location” button on the first time that you run the app, restart your computer and re-run the app.
1b. Create your Yosemite Zone USB drive (Windows)
Follow this step if you’re setting up Yosemite Zone on Windows. Plug your USB drive into your computer, and open TransMac. Find your USB drive on the left-hand column of the TransMac window. Right-click on the USB drive, and click “Format Disk for Mac”. This will delete all of the files on your drive and prepare it for Mac OS X.
Once your USB drive is done formatting, right-click it again and click “Restore with Disk Image”. A file selection window will pop up; choose your Yosemite Zone disk image file (it will probably be called “Yosemite-Zone.dmg”), and proceed. Now, TransMac will write Yosemite Zone onto your USB drive.
This will probably take 20-40 minutes, though it may take longer, depending on the speed of your USB drive. Once TransMac finishes, your USB drive will contain a fully bootable version of the OS X Yosemite installer.
2. Set up the parts of your PC
I covered these steps in my Snow Leopard guide, but they’re worth mentioning again:
- Unplug all USB-connected devices from your computer before you begin the setup (except your keyboard and mouse). A faulty external USB hard drive can cause your Hackintosh bootloader to give you EBIOS errors on startup.
- Open up your computer and unplug any extra internal hard drives that your computer has, besides the hard drive that you’re installing OS X on. (Just unplug the hard drive SATA cables from your motherboard.)
- If possible, connect your monitor to the DVI port of your computer’s graphics. The Mac OS X installer sometimes has problems with HDMI and VGA.
Os X Yosemite Download To Usb
3. Set up your motherboard’s BIOS
Os X Yosemite Download App Store
Essentially, the BIOS (or UEFI) is the settings page for your computer’s motherboard. From here, you can fiddle with how your computer hardware works– it’s often necessary to change a few basic settings in the BIOS or UEFI to get Mac OS X up and running. The BIOS standard is generally used by motherboards from before 2012, while the UEFI standard is used by motherboards made after that.Not sure whether your computer’s motherboard uses BIOS or UEFI? Here’s a quick guide to differentiating between the two: the interface of BIOS is usually monochrome and entirely text-based. Meanwhile, the interface of UEFI usually has pictures, and allows you to use your mouse pointer.
Depending on the brand and standard used by your computer’s motherboard, adjust your settings accordingly:
- If you own a Gigabyte motherboard with BIOS: Guide
- If you own a Gigabyte motherboard with UEFI: Guide
- If you own a non-Gigabyte motherboard with UEFI (from tonymacx86):
- To access BIOS/UEFI Setup, press and hold Delete on a USB Keyboard while the system is booting up.
- Load Optimized Defaults.
- Set USB drive to the highest boot priority.
- If your CPU supports VT-d, disable it.
- If your system has CFG-Lock, disable it.
- If your system has Secure Boot Mode, disable it.
- If your system has OS Type, set it to Other OS.
- Save and exit.
Once that’s done, plug in your Unibeast USB drive in your computer, and then restart your computer.
4. Boot into Yosemite Zone
Restart your Hackintosh, and plug in your Yosemite Zone USB drive. If things go well, your computer will boot from the USB drive instead of booting from your normal hard disk. You will then be able to view the Yosemite Zone menu.
If you do not manage to reach the Yosemite Zone menu, check your motherboard’s BIOS settings to make sure that the changes you made in Step 3 were properly applied. If they were, but you still cannot boot from the Yosemite Zone USB drive, unplug your USB drive, and go back to Step 1. Reformat your USB drive with Disk Utility and try again. If all else fails, try using a different USB drive for Yosemite Zone.
At the Yosemite Zone menu, press the enter key (or return key) to start the OS X Yosemite installer. The installer screen will take several minutes to load. If you are trying to install OS X Yosemite on a computer using an AMD processor, you’ll have to type the boot flag “/amd”, “/amd32”, “/amd64”, or “/amdfx (without quotation marks)– which flag you need depends on your specific processor, so test one flag a time.
In the worst case scenarios, instead of loading the Mac OS X installer, you may end up at a dark gray screen that tells you to restart your computer (a kernel panic), or you may end up with a small crossed-out sign (a loading error). If you get a kernel panic/loading error (or if the Mac OS X installer simply won’t start within 10 minutes), you’ll need to enter some boot flags. To enter boot flags, manually restart your computer by pressing your computer’s power button. Then, once you’ve booted back into the Yosemite Zone menu, try typing any necessary boot flags before pressing the enter/return key. Check out our list of common boot flags and our guide to fixing boot problems with verbose mode for reference.
You need to use Disk Utility to erase a hard drive partition so that OS X Yosemite can install itself on it. In the sidebar of Disk Utility, choose the hard drive partition where you want Yosemite installed, and erase it by using the “Erase” tab. You can also just erase the entire hard drive (this is the preferred solution if you don’t plan to dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X from the same hard drive). In the screenshot below, my two hard drive partitions are called “Cool Stuff” and “Not Cool Stuff”, while my entire hard drive is called “21.47 GB VBOX HARDDRIVE”.
When erasing, the format should be set to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. You can also partition the hard disk by using Disk Utility’s Partition tab.
NOTE: Mac OS X cannot boot from a partition that’s larger than 1 TB in size, so if you have a 2 TB hard drive, you will have to partition it.
On the installation page for Mac OSX, the hard disk/disk partition should now be showing up. Select it, and then click the “Customize” button on the bottom left. This is where using a distro becomes really useful: Yosemite Zone allows you to install extra Hackintosh drivers and kexts, straight from the OS X Yosemite installer. The “Customize” page essentially does the same thing as Multibeast, though the layout (and most of the names of the options) are different.
However, choosing the right options from this page can be really tricky, so unless you’re absolutely certain about which drivers and kexts you need to install for your computer, I don’t recommend installing too much stuff from here. The default selection will enable Mac OS X to boot from the hard drive without any assistance, and automatically enable audio and ethernet. For most computers, that will be enough.
If you wish to install more, refer to our guide to Multibeast. Otherwise, you can figure out the rest in Step 7, where you’ll actually set up your Hackintosh with Multibeast.
If your computer already has Mac OS X installed and you are simply updating it to Yosemite, you can just uncheck all of these options. Mac OS X treats Yosemite as just another update– there’s no need to reinstall all of your kexts and drivers.
Once you’re done with the “Customize” page, install Yosemite. This will take at least 30 minutes.
6. Boot into Mac OS X
Once the installation finishes, remove your Yosemite Zone USB drive, and restart your computer. At the boot screen, you’ll see an Apple icon for the hard drive where you installed Yosemite. Select it (use the arrow keys on your computer) and press “Enter”.
Yosemite will boot. Mission accomplished! Once again, if you get a kernel panic/loading error when you try to boot your new Yosemite installation (or if the installation simply won’t start within 10 minutes), you’ll need to enter some boot flags. To enter boot flags, manually restart your computer by pressing your computer’s power button. Then, once you’ve booted back into the Yosemite Zone menu, try type any necessary boot flags before pressing the enter/return key. Check out our list of common boot flags and our guide to fixing boot problems with verbose mode for reference.
Once Yosemite has booted successfully, click through through the Mac OS X setup screens until you reach the desktop. From here, Yosemite Zone will work its magic, and automatically install the rest of the Hackintosh-specific kexts and drivers from Step 5.
Wait several minutes, while this process works in the background. Once you receive a notification saying that the installation has been completed, restart your computer.
7. Multibeast
Multibeast is a collection of kext files that you’ll need to install for your Hackintoshes to have sound, internet, a high resolution screen, and more. Different Hackintosh builds require different Multibeast setups, though most setups are very similar. Find out what options you need to install by checking our Multibeast guide to OS X Yosemite.
Whether you’re installing OS X on your computer for the first time, or just updating your computer from an older version of OS X, you’ll probably have to run Multibeast after the initial installation of Yosemite.
To run Multibeast in OS X Yosemite, you may have to go the “Security” section of System Preferences in Mac OS X, go to the “General” section, and check “Anywhere” in the “Allow applications” section. After running Multibeast, you’ll also probably want to change your BIOS settings back to normal (from Step 4).
Once that’s done with, you should be running a fully functional copy of OS X Yosemite on your PC. If you plan on updating Mac OS X in the future, check out our guide to updating your Hackintosh. Congratulations!
So, you’ve decided to download an older version of Mac OS X. There are many reasons that could point you to this radical decision. To begin with, some of your apps may not be working properly (or simply crash) on newer operating systems. Also, you may have noticed your Mac’s performance went down right after the last update. Finally, if you want to run a parallel copy of Mac OS X on a virtual machine, you too will need a working installation file of an older Mac OS X. Further down we’ll explain where to get one and what problems you may face down the road.
A list of all Mac OS X versions
We’ll be repeatedly referring to these Apple OS versions below, so it’s good to know the basic macOS timeline.
| Cheetah 10.0 | Puma 10.1 | Jaguar 10.2 |
| Panther 10.3 | Tiger 10.4 | Leopard 10.5 |
| Snow Leopard 10.6 | Lion 10.7 | Mountain Lion 10.8 |
| Mavericks 10.9 | Yosemite 10.10 | El Capitan 10.11 |
| Sierra 10.12 | High Sierra 10.13 | Mojave 10.14 |
| Catalina 10.15 |
STEP 1. Prepare your Mac for installation
Given your Mac isn’t new and is filled with data, you will probably need enough free space on your Mac. This includes not just space for the OS itself but also space for other applications and your user data. One more argument is that the free space on your disk translates into virtual memory so your apps have “fuel” to operate on. The chart below tells you how much free space is needed.
Note, that it is recommended that you install OS on a clean drive. Next, you will need enough disk space available, for example, to create Recovery Partition. Here are some ideas to free up space on your drive:
- Uninstall large unused apps
- Empty Trash Bin and Downloads
- Locate the biggest files on your computer:
Go to Finder > All My Files > Arrange by size
Then you can move your space hoggers onto an external drive or a cloud storage.
If you aren’t comfortable with cleaning the Mac manually, there are some nice automatic “room cleaners”. Our favorite is CleanMyMac as it’s most simple to use of all. It deletes system junk, old broken apps, and the rest of hidden junk on your drive.
Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.4 - 10.8 (free version)
Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.9 (free version)
Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.10 - 10.14 (free version)
STEP 2. Get a copy of Mac OS X download
Normally, it is assumed that updating OS is a one-way road. That’s why going back to a past Apple OS version is problematic. The main challenge is to download the OS installation file itself, because your Mac may already be running a newer version. If you succeed in downloading the OS installation, your next step is to create a bootable USB or DVD and then reinstall the OS on your computer.
How to download older Mac OS X versions via the App Store
If you once had purchased an old version of Mac OS X from the App Store, open it and go to the Purchased tab. There you’ll find all the installers you can download. However, it doesn’t always work that way. The purchased section lists only those operating systems that you had downloaded in the past. But here is the path to check it:
- Click the App Store icon.
- Click Purchases in the top menu.
- Scroll down to find the preferred OS X version.
- Click Download.
This method allows you to download Mavericks and Yosemite by logging with your Apple ID — only if you previously downloaded them from the Mac App Store.
Without App Store: Download Mac OS version as Apple Developer
If you are signed with an Apple Developer account, you can get access to products that are no longer listed on the App Store. If you desperately need a lower OS X version build, consider creating a new Developer account among other options. The membership cost is $99/year and provides a bunch of perks unavailable to ordinary users.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that if you visit developer.apple.com/downloads, you can only find 10.3-10.6 OS X operating systems there. Newer versions are not available because starting Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.7, the App Store has become the only source of updating Apple OS versions.
Purchase an older version of Mac operating system
You can purchase a boxed or email version of past Mac OS X directly from Apple. Both will cost you around $20. For the reason of being rather antiquated, Snow Leopard and earlier Apple versions can only be installed from DVD.
Buy a boxed edition of Snow Leopard 10.6
Get an email copy of Lion 10.7
Get an email copy of Mountain Lion 10.8
The email edition comes with a special download code you can use for the Mac App Store. Note, that to install the Lion or Mountain Lion, your Mac needs to be running Snow Leopard so you can install the newer OS on top of it.
How to get macOS El Capitan download
If you are wondering if you can run El Capitan on an older Mac, rejoice as it’s possible too. But before your Mac can run El Capitan it has to be updated to OS X 10.6.8. So, here are main steps you should take:
1. Install Snow Leopard from install DVD.
2. Update to 10.6.8 using Software Update.
3. Download El Capitan here.
“I can’t download an old version of Mac OS X”
If you have a newer Mac, there is no physical option to install Mac OS versions older than your current Mac model. For instance, if your MacBook was released in 2014, don’t expect it to run any OS released prior of that time, because older Apple OS versions simply do not include hardware drivers for your Mac.
But as it often happens, workarounds are possible. There is still a chance to download the installation file if you have an access to a Mac (or virtual machine) running that operating system. For example, to get an installer for Lion, you may ask a friend who has Lion-operated Mac or, once again, set up a virtual machine running Lion. Then you will need to prepare an external drive to download the installation file using OS X Utilities.
After you’ve completed the download, the installer should launch automatically, but you can click Cancel and copy the file you need. Below is the detailed instruction how to do it.
STEP 3. Install older OS X onto an external drive
The following method allows you to download Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks.
- Start your Mac holding down Command + R.
- Prepare a clean external drive (at least 10 GB of storage).
- Within OS X Utilities, choose Reinstall OS X.
- Select external drive as a source.
- Enter your Apple ID.
Now the OS should start downloading automatically onto the external drive. After the download is complete, your Mac will prompt you to do a restart, but at this point, you should completely shut it down. Now that the installation file is “captured” onto your external drive, you can reinstall the OS, this time running the file on your Mac.
- Boot your Mac from your standard drive.
- Connect the external drive.
- Go to external drive > OS X Install Data.
Locate InstallESD.dmg disk image file — this is the file you need to reinstall Lion OS X. The same steps are valid for Mountain Lion and Mavericks.
How to downgrade a Mac running later macOS versions
If your Mac runs macOS Sierra 10.12 or macOS High Sierra 10.13, it is possible to revert it to the previous system if you are not satisfied with the experience. You can do it either with Time Machine or by creating a bootable USB or external drive.
Instruction to downgrade from macOS Sierra
Instruction to downgrade from macOS High Sierra
Instruction to downgrade from macOS Mojave
Instruction to downgrade from macOS Catalina
Before you do it, the best advice is to back your Mac up so your most important files stay intact. In addition to that, it makes sense to clean up your Mac from old system junk files and application leftovers. The easiest way to do it is to run CleanMyMac X on your machine (download it for free here).
Visit your local Apple Store to download older OS X version
If none of the options to get older OS X worked, pay a visit to nearest local Apple Store. They should have image installations going back to OS Leopard and earlier. You can also ask their assistance to create a bootable USB drive with the installation file. So here you are. We hope this article has helped you to download an old version of Mac OS X. Below are a few more links you may find interesting.
Os X Yosemite Download
These might also interest you: