recyclemac

Those of us who use Macs may have need to reinstall an older version of the OS from time to time. At the MacRecycleClinic, we keep thumb drives and external hard drives partitioned with individual installers from Catalina on back – or even Time Machine backups (which are quicker than OS installs).

While it might seem easy to just Google your request, it’s not always that easy. Thus, we offer a list of OS downloads (from the Apple website and beyond) so that you don’t have to go looking for them. Even tho Catalina is available via the App Store, we’ll include it here (as a link).

Note that some of the earlier Mac OS varieties like OS 7 Lion is, for some reason, sold by Apple rather than provided for free (but keep reading – there’s a solution for that!). If you have a need for a really old OS and don’t want to download and install, contact MacRecycleClinic, as we have DVDs with most of the older OS software – including some PowerPC software, and can help you with the install.

If you want to make a bootable installer (to put on an external drive or thumb drive), this is what Apple suggests. Better is this great free (donationware) App – DiskMakerX.

(All photos except where noted and links are courtesy Apple via the company website.)

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Update – Dec. 2021 – The Internet Archive also offers Mac OS software downloads from its site for free, along with other software. It is an amazing site and offers a tremendous amount of information from software to music, old TV shows and much, much more (check out the WayBackMachine for old websites!) Please give them a donation if you decide to use their site or download software.

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** NOTE: IF THE LINKS BELOW DON’T WORK YOU CAN USE THE DOSDUDE SOFTWARE PATCHER FOR EACH OF THE OS INSTALLS. DOWNLOAD AND RUN THE SPECIFIC PATCHER (YOU’LL HAVE TO ALLOW ITS DOWNLOAD FROM THE SECURITY&PRIVACY PREFERENCE PANE) AND THEN DOWNLOAD THE OS FROM THE TOOLS MENU ON THE TOOLBAR.. THAT WILL BE YOUR INSTALLER. YOU’LL FIND THE LINK HERE.

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Following is a rundown of all the OS X versions for the Mac through 2020 – (thanks, Macworld UK)! Even better – this UK site has actual download links for older Apple software going way, way back starting with OS 10.9 Mavericks (from the Apple Discussion Community.)

Snow Leopard and earlier Apple OS versions can only be installed from DVD (or 3.5 disk).
That said – we just found (March, 2021) a website that lets you download at least some of these earlier Mac operating systems:
https://webforpc.com/sitemap/

OS X 10.0: Cheetah – 24 March 2001
OS X 10.1: Puma – 25 September 2001
OS X 10.2: Jaguar – 24 August 2002
OS X 10.3 Panther (Pinot) – 24 October 2003
OS X 10.4 Tiger (Merlot) – 29 April 2005
[OS X 10.4.4 Tiger (Chardonnay)]
OS X 10.5 Leopard (Chablis) – 26 October 2007
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – 28 August 2009

OS X 10.7 Lion (Barolo) – 20 July 2011
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Zinfandel) – 25 July 2012
OS X 10.9 Mavericks (Cabernet) – 22 October 2013
OS X 10.10: Yosemite (Syrah) – 16 October 2014
OS X 10.11: El Capitan (Gala) – 30 September 2015
macOS 10.12: Sierra (Fuji) – 20 September 2016
macOS 10.13: High Sierra (Lobo) – 25 September 2017
macOS 10.14: Mojave (Liberty) – 24 September 2018
macOS 10.15: Catalina (Jazz) – 7 October 2019
macOS 10.16: Big Sur – 20 November 2020

By the way – this is an interesting compilation of all the older Apple/Mac software. It’s a list only as the “links” don’t work.