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macOS Big Sur elevates the most advanced desktop operating system in the world to a new level of power and beauty. Experience Mac to the fullest with a refined new design. Enjoy the biggest Safari update ever. Discover new features for Maps and Messages. Get even more transparency around your privacy.
Jan 13, 2021 Some info here on how to download High Sierra. Haven’t tested it though! Apple Support How to get old versions of macOS. If your Mac isn't compatible with the latest macOS, you may still be able to upgrade to an earlier macOS, such as macOS Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra or El Capitan. Check out the official trailer for Here We Go Again — Streaming only on UMC. #HereWeGoAgainOnUMC- SUBSCRIBE to UMC on YouTube: Downlo.
Chances are, your Mac can run macOS Big Sur
The following models are supported:
- MacBook (2015 or later)
- MacBook Air (2013 or later)
- MacBook Pro (Late 2013 or later)
- Mac mini (2014 or later)
- iMac (2014 or later)
- iMac Pro (2017 or later)
- Mac Pro (2013 or later)
To see which model you have, click the Apple icon in your menu bar and choose About This Mac.
Make sure you’re ready to upgrade.
Before you upgrade, we recommend that you back up your Mac. If your Mac is running OS X Mavericks 10.9 or later, you can upgrade directly to macOS Big Sur. You’ll need the following:
- OS X 10.9 or later
- 4GB of memory
- 35.5GB available storage on macOS Sierra or later*
- Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.
- Some features require a compatible internet service provider; fees may apply.
Upgrading is free and easy
Upgrading from macOS Catalina 10.15 or Mojave 10.14?
Go to Software Update in System Preferences to find macOS Big Sur. Click Upgrade Now and follow the onscreen instructions.
Upgrading from an older version of macOS?
If you’re running any release from macOS 10.13 to 10.9, you can upgrade to macOS Big Sur from the App Store. If you’re running Mountain Lion 10.8, you will need to upgrade to El Capitan 10.11 first.
If you don’t have broadband access, you can upgrade your Mac at any Apple Store.
- OS X 10.9 or later
- 4GB of memory
- 35.5GB available storage on macOS Sierra or later*
- Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.
- Some features require a compatible internet service provider; fees may apply.
For details about your Mac model, click the Apple icon at the top left of your screen and choose About This Mac. These Mac models are compatible with macOS Big Sur:
- MacBook (2015 or later)
- MacBook Air (2013 or later)
- MacBook Pro (Late 2013 or later)
- Mac mini (2014 or later)
- iMac (2014 or later)
- iMac Pro (2017 or later)
- Mac Pro (2013 or later)
Siri
Requires a broadband internet connection and microphone (built-in or external).
Hey Siri
Supported by the following Mac models:
- MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
- MacBook Air (2018 or later)
- iMac Pro (2017 or later)
Dictation, Voice Control, and Voice Memos
Requires a microphone (built-in or external).
Spotlight Suggestions
Requires a broadband internet connection.
Gestures
Requires a Multi-Touch trackpad, Force Touch trackpad, Magic Trackpad, or Magic Mouse.
Force Touch gestures require a Force Touch trackpad.
VoiceOver gestures require a Multi-Touch trackpad, Force Touch trackpad, or Magic Trackpad.
Photo Booth
Requires a FaceTime or iSight camera (built-in or external) or USB video class (UVC) camera.
FaceTime
Audio calls require a microphone (built-in or external) and broadband internet connection.
Video calls require a built-in FaceTime camera, an iSight camera (built-in or external), or a USB video class (UVC) camera; and broadband internet connection.
Apple TV
High dynamic range (HDR) video playback is supported by the following Mac models:
- MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
- iMac Pro (2017 or later)
- Mac Pro (2019) with Pro Display XDR
Dolby Atmos soundtrack playback is supported by the following Mac models:
- MacBook Air (2018 or later)
- MacBook Pro (2018 or later)
Sidecar
Supported by the following Mac models:
- MacBook (2016 or later)
- MacBook Air (2018 or later)
- MacBook Pro (2016 or later)
- Mac mini (2018 or later)
- iMac (late 2015 or later)
- iMac Pro (2017 or later)
- Mac Pro (2019)
Supported by all iPad models with Apple Pencil support:
- 12.9-inch iPad Pro
- 11-inch iPad Pro
- 10.5-inch iPad Pro
- 9.7-inch iPad Pro
- iPad (6th generation or later)
- iPad mini (5th generation)
- iPad Air (3rd and 4th generation)
Continuity Camera
Requires an iPhone or iPad that supports iOS 12 or later.
Continuity Sketch and Continuity Markup
Requires an iPhone with iOS 13 or later or an iPad with iPadOS 13 or later.
Handoff
Requires an iPhone or iPad with a Lightning connector or with USB-C and iOS 8 or later.
Instant Hotspot
Requires an iPhone or iPad with cellular connectivity, a Lightning connector or USB-C, and iOS 8.1 or later. Requires Personal Hotspot service through your carrier.
Universal Clipboard
Requires an iPhone or iPad with a Lightning connector or with USB-C and iOS 10 or later.
Auto Unlock
Requires an Apple Watch with watchOS 3 or later or an iPhone 5 or later.
Approve with Apple Watch
Requires an Apple Watch with watchOS 6 or later or an iPhone 6s or later with iOS 13 or later.
Apple Pay on the Web
Requires a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air with Touch ID, an iPhone 6 or later with iOS 10 or later, or an Apple Watch with watchOS 3 or later.
Phone Calling
Requires an iPhone with iOS 8 or later and an activated carrier plan.
SMS
Requires an iPhone with iOS 8.1 or later and an activated carrier plan.
Home
Requires an iPhone with iOS 12 or later and a configured Home app.
AirDrop
AirDrop to iOS and iPadOS devices requires an iPhone or iPad with a Lightning connector or with USB-C and iOS 7 or later.
AirPlay
AirPlay Mirroring requires an Apple TV (2nd generation or later).
AirPlay for web video requires an Apple TV (2nd generation or later).
Peer-to-peer AirPlay requires a Mac (2012 or later) and an Apple TV (3rd generation rev A, model A1469 or later) with Apple TV software 7.0 or later.
Time Machine
Requires an external storage device (sold separately).
Maps electric vehicle routing
Requires an iPhone with iOS 14 and a compatible electric vehicle.
Maps license plate restrictions
Requires an iPhone running iOS 14 or an iPad running iPadOS 14.
Boot Camp
Allows Boot Camp installations of Windows 10 on supported Mac models.
Exchange Support
Requires Microsoft Office 365, Exchange 2016, Exchange 2013, or Exchange Server 2010. Installing the latest Service Packs is recommended.
Windows Migration
Supports OS X 10.7 or later and Windows 7 or later.
App Store
Available only to persons age 13 or older in the U.S. and many other countries and regions.
Photos
The improved Retouch tool is supported on the following Mac models:
- MacBook Pro (15-inch and 16-inch models) introduced in 2016 or later
- iMac (Retina 5K models) introduced in 2014 or later
- iMac (Retina 4K models) introduced in 2017 or later
- iMac Pro (2017 or later)
- Mac Pro introduced in 2013 or later
- Apple Books
- Apple News
- App Store
- Automator
- Calculator
- Calendar
- Chess
- Contacts
- Dictionary
- DVD Player
- FaceTime
- Find My
- Font Book
- Home
- Image Capture
- Launchpad
- Maps
- Messages
- Mission Control
- Music
- Notes
- Photo Booth
- Photos
- Podcasts
- Preview
- QuickTime Player
- Reminders
- Safari
- Siri
- Stickies
- Stocks
- System Preferences
- TextEdit
- Time Machine
- TV
- Voice Memos
- Activity Monitor
- AirPort Utility
- Audio MIDI Setup
- Bluetooth File Exchange
- Boot Camp Assistant
- ColorSync Utility
- Console
- Digital Color Meter
- Disk Utility
- Grapher
- Keychain Access
- Migration Assistant
- Screenshot
- Screen Time
- Script Editor
- Sidecar
- System Information
- Terminal
- VoiceOver Utility
- Arabic
- Catalan
- Croatian
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
- Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong)
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English (Australia)
- English (UK)
- English (U.S.)
- Finnish
- French
- French (Canada)
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Brazilian Portuguese
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Slovak
- Spanish
- Spanish (Latin America)
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
A few days ago, after my 12-inch MacBook running the latest Sierra became sluggish, I restarted. After entering my account password, my Mac showed a white progress spinner that uses “spokes”—the kind of spinner you usually see at shutdown—would appear for several seconds, then disappear, replaced with a cursor that couldn’t be moved with the trackpad. This would recur over and over for hours.
I’d had a similar sort of problem crop up once during beta testing for software that I don’t want to mention the name of, as the issue was resolved for those of us on the cutting edge and the particular release of software is no longer in development. In that case, the spinner would appear and disappear, but no cursor, and much more rapidly. I contacted the former developer and followed his instructions to use Recovery and Terminal to remove all relevant files, but that didn’t solve this problem. Without the software installed, something else still triggered this slightly different behavior.
I went through a litany of options, including, after asking for advice on Twitter, ones I hadn’t considered:
- I could boot into Recovery (Command-R after startup or restart), so I booted into it and ran Disk Utility. The disk checked out fine.
- I booted into single-user mode and used the command-line tools to check for problems, and again, nothing emerged. After exiting into an interactive session, the same spinner issue cropped up. None of the errors I could find helped diagnose the problem.
- Safe mode didn’t bypass the point after login where the blockade happened, so it wasn’t of use.
- In Recovery, I reinstalled Sierra without erasing the disk. Same problem.
The one thing I didn’t remember to try, and wish I had, was attempting to screen share from another Mac—or even using SSH (remote secure Terminal-style access) to see if I could access the system while things were failing.
I began to wonder if it weren’t a video-card or GPU problem instead of a system problem. Apple and other computer makers engage a simpler mode in their graphics system at boot time, and then fire up the full power once the OS has initialized. Apple’s safe mode, for instance, disables accelerated graphics, for instance, which can cause video glitches.
To isolate whether it was hardware or the OS, I decided that since the disk was still reachable, I’d perform a full clone via Recovery using Disk Utility. Here’s how you do that:
- Connect an external drive.
- Boot into Recovery (Command-R).
- Click Disk Utility in the list that appears and click Continue.
- (Optional) If you have FileVault enabled, select your partition, and click Mount. When prompted, enter any administrative password.
- Select the startup drive and then choose File > New Image > Image from “Partition Name.”
- Choose the external drive as the destination.
This operation creates a mountable but not bootable clone as a disk image. Then I used Disk Utility to erase the drive. Unfortunately, this erased the Recovery partition, too! On restart, the Mac reverted to Internet Recovery, where it downloads the Recovery software and then installs and launches it. I used Disk Utility to restore my startup drive from the clone, figuring that might have cleared the condition.
(In Disk Utility, select the startup drive, click Restore, and then click Image to select the image. Some clones might not work in image form, but Disk Utility mounts them, and then you can select the mounted clone as the source for a restore.)
Restoring resulted in the same problem, so whatever the issue was, it was embedded in the particular system I had installed.
I went back and booted into Recovery, and erased the drive again and installed macOS. Because of the age of the machine, its Internet Recovery partition loaded El Capitan. (If you have Sierra’s Recovery software installed, as of 10.12.4, you can force either the oldest compatible OS X/macOS to load or the very latest depending on whether you press Command-R or Command-Option-R. Because I’d erased the Recovery disk, Internet Recovery installed the version that the computer shipped with.) The Mac booted fine into El Capitan release, so I ran the Sierra update separately, which also worked. This made a hardware fault seem unlikely.
Instead of restoring again, I ran Migration Assistant, and selected my cloned disk image as the source. I selected everything offered for migration. Several hours went by, the machine rebooted, and…I was back again to cursor/spinner/cursor/spinner.
I decided to try one more thing before throwing myself on the mercy of the Genius Bar. (The next appointment when this all started was about five days later, so I hadn’t yet seen Apple.)
I erased the startup partition (not the drive) and reinstalled Sierra. Then I used Migration Assistant to import just Applications, my user account, and Computer & Network Settings. This time, I unchecked Other Files and Folders, assuming that this is where the trouble lay if it were system related. Since I had a full clone, I could resuscitate any missing items later if necessary.
Here We Go Again Mac Os Download
This time was the charm. I had to re-login into various services (Apple and otherwise), retarget Backblaze to the “new” drive with the same name, and allow a bunch of system-level behavior through the Security & Privacy system preference pane’s Privacy tab. I also had to re-enable FileVault, which is not in effect after erasing a drive, as it has to be set up while running macOS.
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Here We Go Again Mac Os Download
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