Legacy 4. Searching for a specific macOS installer
The Apple catalogs maintain multiple versions of the macOS installer. erase-install.sh can download any that is available. By default it will download the latest version available that is compatible with the hardware on which the script is being run.
If you wish to obtain a different installer, you might want to search the catalog to find the appropriate installer version to download.
To see which versions of the macOS installer app are available, run sudo /path/to/erase-install.sh --list from Terminal. You will see an output something like below:
installinstallmacos.py - get macOS installers from the Apple software catalog
This Mac:
Model Identifier : MacBookAir10,1
Device ID : J313AP
OS Version : 11.3.1
Build ID : 20E241
# ProductID Version Build Post Date Title Notes/Warnings
1 001-15219 10.15.5 19F2200 2020-06-15 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
2 001-68446 10.15.7 19H15 2020-11-11 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
3 001-36801 10.15.6 19G2021 2020-08-12 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
4 071-32414 11.3.1 20E241 2021-05-03 macOS Big Sur
5 001-04366 10.15.4 19E2269 2020-05-04 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
6 071-08935 11.2.2 20D80 2021-03-01 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
7 061-86291 10.15.3 19D2064 2020-03-23 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
8 041-91758 10.13.6 17G66 2019-10-19 macOS High Sierra Unsupported macOS version
9 041-88800 10.14.4 18E2034 2019-10-23 macOS Mojave Unsupported macOS version
10 071-14766 11.2.3 20D91 2021-03-08 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
11 061-26589 10.14.6 18G103 2019-10-14 macOS Mojave Unsupported macOS version
12 071-05432 11.2.1 20D75 2021-02-15 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
13 001-51042 10.15.7 19H2 2020-09-24 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
14 001-36735 10.15.6 19G2006 2020-08-06 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
15 001-57224 10.15.7 19H4 2020-10-27 macOS Catalina Unsupported macOS version
16 041-90855 10.13.5 17F66a 2019-10-23 Install macOS High Sierra Beta Unsupported macOS version
17 061-26578 10.14.5 18F2059 2019-10-14 macOS Mojave Unsupported macOS version
18 071-29172 11.3 20E232 2021-04-26 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
All available installers are listed. A check is made on each one to see if it is compatible with the system on which the script is being run. If it is not, for example because it is older than the current system, it will be listed as Unsupported macOS version.
To see which installer pkgs are available, run sudo /path/to/erase-install.sh --pkg --list from Terminal. You will see an output something like below:
installinstallmacos.py - get macOS installers from the Apple software catalog
This Mac:
Model Identifier : MacBookAir10,1
Device ID : J313AP
OS Version : 11.3.1
Build ID : 20E241
# ProductID Version Build Post Date Title Notes/Warnings
1 071-32414 11.3.1 20E241 2021-05-03 macOS Big Sur
2 071-14766 11.2.3 20D91 2021-03-08 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
3 071-05432 11.2.1 20D75 2021-02-15 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
4 071-08935 11.2.2 20D80 2021-03-01 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
5 071-29172 11.3 20E232 2021-04-26 macOS Big Sur Unsupported macOS version
To see which versions of the macOS installer app are available via the --fetch-full-installer option, run sudo /path/to/erase-install.sh --list-full-installers from Terminal. You will see an output something like below:
Finding available software
Software Update found the following full installers:
* Title: macOS Big Sur, Version: 11.3.1, Size: 12411305377K
* Title: macOS Big Sur, Version: 11.3, Size: 12425084347K
* Title: macOS Big Sur, Version: 11.2.3, Size: 12211077798K
* Title: macOS Big Sur, Version: 11.2.2, Size: 12200254955K
* Title: macOS Big Sur, Version: 11.2.1, Size: 12199403070K
Note that no compatibility check is made on the available versions using this method at this time. This is because no Build Version is accessible via this method, so a reliable comparison cannot be made.
The --list parameter can be combined with --seed (or --seedprogram) to search for available versions of the macOS installer app in each seed program. This is commonly used to find beta installers. The available seed programs are PublicSeed, CustomerSeed and DeveloperSeed. These correspond to the Public Beta, AppleSeed and Developer catalogs.
You can specify a non-standard catalog URL. This overrides --seedprogram. This may be required during the beta periods or on obsolete versions of macOS.
This is a convenience wrapper for the --catalogurl option. Instead of supplying a CATALOG_URL, you may just supply an OS version, for example --catalog 10.15 will use the CATALOG_URL associated with macOS 10.15, --catalog 11 will use the CATALOG_URL associated with macOS 11, and so on.