Mac OS X 10.11 “El Capitan” was released in late 2015 and official support for this operating system ended in late 2018. Even though this is no longer supported for newer Mac devices, for older Mac devices, it may be the best operating system that is supported. For example, the Mac Pro 3,1 that was released in 2008 only officially has Mac OS X El Capitan as the most recent Mac OS X version it can run.
What you’ll need:
- A Mac computer that supports OS X El Capitan
- MacBook (Early 2015)
- MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, Early 2009, or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
- MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
- Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
- iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
- Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
- Xserve (Early 2009)
- A USB Flash Drive with at least 8 GB of storage
- An internet connection
Download Mac OS X 10.11 “El Capitan”
Apple conveniently offers downloads of some of its older operating systems on its website including Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” through macOS 12 “Monterey” as of writing. Just use this link to find the download for El Capitan on their website. The download you find should be for a .dmg file named “InstallMacOSX.dmg”. Once you’ve got that file, go ahead and double click on it to mount it.
Inside the mounted .dmg file, you should see a file labeled “InstallMacOSX.pkg”. Double click on this file to run the installer. As a reminder, this installer package will only work if you are on a Mac that will support Mac OS X 10.11 “El Capitan”. You can use a computer that is already running a newer version of the operating system, but it must have previously been able to run El Capitan.
Follow the prompts in the installer to make sure your computer can run El Capitan and you should eventually see a prompt that looks like the one in the screenshot below.
Now that you have this installed, you should have an Application in your Applications folder named “Install OS X El Capitan”. Once you have this you’re ready to move on to the next step.
Preparing your installation media
For this step you’ll need a flash drive that is at least 8 GB to be able to create your installation media. Start off by plugging that in to the Mac that you just downloaded Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan on.
Once you’ve got that plugged in, launch Disk Utility. You can find this by searching in Spotlight or by looking in the Utilites folder that’s in the Applications folder on your Mac.
Once in Disk Utility, click “View” in the top taskbar and select “Show All Devices”.
Now that this is selected, you should be able to see both the Device and the partitions within it in the left sidebar. Select the USB Flash Drive that you’re planning to load your installer on to. In my case, this is named “USB SanDisk 3.2Gen1 Media”
During this next step any data on the device you’re using will be lost, so if you need to keep this data, be sure to back anything up from this device before moving forward!
In the left sidebar, select your flash drive and then click “Erase” in the top bar. Once the Erase menu opens, make sure your settings match the ones in the screenshot below and then click “Erase”.
Now that you’ve formatted and re-partitioned your drive it should be ready to use with the steps below.
Transferring Mac OS X Installer to your Flash Drive
To get your USB Media ready to boot a Mac OS X installer open a Terminal window. You can find this either using the Spotlight search tool or looking in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder.
Once you have your Terminal window open, type in the following command.
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Installer --applicationpath /Applicatons/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.appOnce you’ve started this process it should take between 10 and 30 minutes to copy the files depending on the speed of your hard drive and flash drive. The output you see in the terminal window should look like the screenshot below and once completed, you should see a drive named “Install OS X El Capitan” in Finder. From here, you should be all set to remove your drive and boot it up on the Mac that you’re trying to recover.
To boot from a flash drive on most Mac devices, you’ll hold the option key on your keyboard right after you push the power button. If your keyboard doesn’t have an option key, hold the alt key. This is the equivalent of the option key on a keyboard designed for Windows computers.
