OS X Snow Leopard ships as a boxed version and requires a disk drive to install. The earliest versions, OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion are available on the Apple Store’s website and arrive to you via email for download. If your goal is to download a version of macOS that you have not already used, or, that was not available as an update from the App Store after you bought your Mac, you may need to purchase it. What if I can’t find the version I want in the app store? Clicking the install button of the macOS you want will begin downloading the file. Tab to the Purchase page of the menu and scroll down to find the line for previous operating systems. You can see all previous versions of OS X your Mac has installed by opening up the App Store and clicking the icon in Applications. Once you have space on your computer, figure out what version of OS X you would like to install. To uninstall certain apps, find the Uninstaller tab and select the apps you haven’t been using for a while.

Review Details to see the list of suggested optimizations.

Select the Smart Scan tab and click Scan.

Optimizing your Mac with CleanMyMac is effortless: To make things easy, use a specialized app like CleanMyMac, which will quickly free up space by detecting unused apps and large files, and offering to completely delete them, with all their hidden corresponding files, in one quick click. Depending on how tidy you are, this might take quite a bit of time. You can, of course, do so manually by deleting unused files and uninstalling old software to free up disk space. You’ll need around around eight gigabytes free depending on which macOS you downgrade to.Įven if you do have enough space, it’s a good idea to clean your computer before installing the desired operating system. Tabbing over to Storage will let you know how much disk space you have available. Clicking the apple in the top left corner of your desktop and selecting About This Mac will allow you to see what OS X version you are currently running. Make sure you are ready to downgrade your operating system by checking in with what version of OS X you already have and ensuring you have enough hard drive room to download the older version. In this article, we’ll take you through everything you need to download and install an old OS X on your Mac.

Try free ✕ How to Install Old OS X on Your MacĪlthough you might think that going back to the old macOS is not possible by looking at the App Store Updates tab, it’s actually quite easy to do.

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