Do this until the App Store app says that there are no more updates. Just keep installing updates, rebooting El Capitan, and then checking for more updates. Get all the updates to El Capitan-there will be several, each of which must be installed in sequence. Launch the App Store app inside El Capitan, not the App Store app on your host. First, you have to install all the updates to El Capitan. Normally, I would install Parallels Tools at this point. Download and install all the El Capitan updates in this VM. It takes a little while to download 6 GB, but once done, you will have one of these in your Applications folder.įigure 8 3. Once you’re a member of one of these programs, you can download the El Capitan installer app for free. To get the El Capitan installer, you have to either join the free Apple Beta Software Program or be a registered Apple Developer. (I really have to get better Internet access at home.) Install Parallels Tools in this VM.Īll in all, this took me about three hours, but most of that time was downloading.

Create a new, empty VM, and install the El Capitan beta in this VM. Some Parallels Desktop users have asked me how to do the installation of El Capitan in Parallels Desktop 11, and I’m happy to tell you in this blog post.Īt a high level, here are the steps, which I will explain in detail and with lots of screenshots in the rest of the post: 1. If you want to install macOS High Sierra please check out this blog post.

A VM is a sandboxed environment, so any issues seen in the beta OS won’t affect any of your files on the Mac, destabilize your host OS, or even require that you back up your Mac before installing the beta. A virtual machine (VM) is the ideal way to check out an OS that has been released as a beta, like Mac OS X 10.11, also known as El Capitan.

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