- Introduction
- YouTube Video
- Requirements
- Downloading the macOS 27 Golden Gate Installer
- Creating the USB Installation Drive
Introduction
Hi there. In this article, I'll be going over how you can create a macOS 27 Golden Gate installation drive using a USB stick. Once created, it can be used to upgrade, install or reinstall macOS 27 on a supported Mac.
YouTube Video
If you would prefer to see this article in video form, I have a YouTube video for it below:
Requirements
To be able to create the installation drive, you'll need a 32GB USB stick or higher, which this time around can only be used with Apple Silicon-based Mac's.
This is because Apple has dropped support for Intel-based Mac's, starting with macOS 27.
You can find a list of Mac's that are supported for macOS 27 here.
Before you start, make sure to backup any data that's on the USB stick as it will be erased.
Downloading the macOS 27 Golden Gate Installer
To download the macOS 27 installer, you'll need to use the command line for the full version that is used to create the installation disk. The version that you get via System Settings is only used for upgrading that Mac.
First, you'll need to open the terminal application. To do that, use spotlight by pressing command and space together. Type terminal and hover over to the terminal application. It looks like a black box with a white arrow as shown below.
Double-left click on it to open the application.
Your terminal may look different to mine but don't worry about that.
You can also get to it by opening a Finder window, going to the Applications folder, then the Utilities folder and then double clicking on Terminal.
You then need to determine what the latest version of macOS 27 is. There are two ways to do this. The first way is to use this webpage, which shows it being 27.0 at the time of writing.
The second method is to run the following command in the terminal:
softwareupdate --list-full-installers
The latest version is at the top, which again is 27.0. If a newer version is available, it will be shown at the top.
The next step is to download the installer for macOS 27. To do that, run the following command. If a newer version is available, replace 27.0 with that version if you want to, or use one of the previous versions in the list if you need to make a USB installer drive for one them:
softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 27.0
Creating the USB Installation Drive
Once the installer has finished downloading, it will be located in the Applications folder in Finder.
Now you can make the USB installation drive. First, make sure your USB stick is connected to your Mac. The one I used is called usbstick.
I would recommend renaming your USB stick to a name that has no spaces to make this easier.
Once again, remember to backup anything that is on the USB stick that you want to keep before you go any further as it will be erased.
When you are ready, run the following command in the terminal. Replace usbstick at the end of the command with the name of your USB stick.
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ 27\ Golden\ Gate.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/usbstick
Press enter and then type in your password, or the username and password for an administrator account if your account doesn't have that level of permission.
When it asks you to confirm if the USB stick can be erased, press Y and then enter.
The USB stick will disappear from Finder and come back later with a name of Install macOS 27 Golden Gate. This is normal.
Once the installation disk has been created, you can close the terminal down.
If you want to, you can also delete the installer that was downloaded in the Applications folder.
You can now use the USB stick to upgrade, install, or reinstall macOS 27 Golden Gate on a supported Mac.
To upgrade, run the installer that is on the USB stick and go through the setup wizard.
To boot a Mac off of the USB stick to install from it, insert the USB Stick into the Mac you want to boot up from, shut it down and then press and hold the power button until the boot device screen appears. Click on the USB Stick and then continue to boot up from it.
You'll then get this screen to start the installation process.
Once it has finished booting, follow the wizard to complete the installation. If you need to partition or erase your Mac's SSD, you can run Disk Utility from the menu bar.
That concludes this article. Thanks for reading and have a nice day!
