hoakley September 28, 2017 Macs, Technology

Why can’t I download and install macOS Sierra any more? (Updated)

Even if you downloaded macOS Sierra from the App Store using your current Apple ID, you may not be able to obtain it now. Apple has not only withdrawn it from its list of products available in the App Store, but has removed it from the Purchased tab of the App Store app.

According to Apple, there are only two ways of obtaining its recent operating system installers: from the App Store, or when started up in one of the variants of Recovery mode.

If you have previously downloaded El Capitan from the App Store, it remains in your list of ‘purchases’, and you can always download the installer again through that account, but only that account. If you no longer have access to that account, then it is gone forever.

This is not true of Sierra: if you previously downloaded the Sierra installer from the App Store as a ‘purchase’, you will discover that Apple has now removed it from the list shown in the Purchased tab of the App Store app.

If you are using a Mac which has not been upgraded to Sierra 10.12.4 or later, there are only two variants of Recovery mode available to you:

local recovery (Command-R), which will install the latest version which was already installed, and cannot upgrade macOS;
remote recovery (Command-Option-R), which will install the version of macOS or OS X which came with your Mac, and cannot upgrade macOS.

Indeed, for those Macs which have been upgraded to Sierra 10.12.4 or later, the new variants will only install the latest compatible macOS, which is High Sierra, or the version which came with your Mac.

So if you are still running El Capitan, you cannot now upgrade to Sierra, only to High Sierra, unless you happened to download the Sierra installer and kept a copy. You might like to speak to a friend who still has a copy of the Sierra installer, though, and try that. I should point out that that would be a violation of its licence terms, though.

You may wish to speculate as to why Apple has done this with Sierra, but has left El Capitan in the Purchased list. Some Macs cannot be upgraded beyond El Capitan, although in theory all Macs that can run Sierra can also run High Sierra. But there are many users who rely on products, including some of Apple’s, which are compatible with Sierra but incompatible with High Sierra – Apple’s older Pro apps are an example. Is Apple using this to try to force users to upgrade to High Sierra, knowing that for many it is a less than attractive upgrade?

Whatever Apple’s reasons, the complete withdrawal of Sierra only a year after it was first released is hardly supporting users, is it?

(Rewritten 1000 28 September 2017 to reflect changes in App Store policy.)

15Comments

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1

anon on September 28, 2017 at 6:49 am

“If you have previously downloaded Sierra […] from the App Store, [it remains] in your list of ‘purchases’…”

This isn’t correct. Release versions of Sierra, like High Sierra, do not show up in the Purchased tab. Regardless of Apple ID account, those installers are gone forever.

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- 2
  
  hoakley on September 28, 2017 at 7:35 am
  
  I corrected that in my note thanks.
  
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  - 3
    
    hoakley on September 28, 2017 at 9:11 am
    
    I have now had a chance to rewrite this article fully in the light of the recent change in App Store policy.
    I will be writing more about this in a future article, as you might expect.
    Howard.
    
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4

jdaniel2014 on September 29, 2017 at 12:14 am

I filed a bug report about this. But Apple just responded asking for a sysdiagnose. I tried to give them one bug the bug reporter upload feature doesn’t work.

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- 5
  
  hoakley on September 29, 2017 at 6:25 am
  
  Well done.
  Apple asked for a sysdiagnose to provide them with info about their policy of pulling macOS Sierra from their App Store? Really? That is absurd. I’d ask them how it could possibly be relevant.
  Howard.
  
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6

BruceB on September 29, 2017 at 11:39 am

I am running 10.10.5 Yosemite, but I “purchased” Sierra some time ago. Sierra still appears (as of today) in my list of purchases, and I am able to download it. Looking at the always useful discussions at Macintouch, it seems that Sierra is still available to those who have previously purchased it and are running 10.11.6 El Capitan or earlier, but not to those running Sierra or later (possibly the cut-off is with 10.12.4, not yet clear).

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- 7
  
  hoakley on September 29, 2017 at 11:42 am
  
  Thank you.
  That is even more bizarre behaviour.
  Howard.
  
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- 8
  
  anon on September 29, 2017 at 3:07 pm
  
  I have a Mac running 10.8.5 that shows neither Sierra nor High Sierra in the Purchased tab for my account, even though I downloaded and installed them on other Macs. Is it possible you’re looking at an entry for a beta release?
  
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  - 9
    
    hoakley on September 29, 2017 at 3:15 pm
    
    Is it more likely that the App Store knows whether you have ‘purchased’ High Sierra, and determines the availability of Sierra on that basis alone? So if you have purchased High Sierra, it then automatically removes Sierra from your Purchased tab. If you haven’t ‘purchased’ High Sierra, then Sierra remains in Purchased.
    It is also bizarre that High Sierra doesn’t appear in the Purchased list for anyone.
    This is becoming ridiculously complex.
    Howard.
    
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10

cade on October 1, 2017 at 8:12 pm

I haven’t even downloaded High Sierra yet, but in app store Purchases: NONE of my OS X system updates (El Capitan, Sierra) appear at all. I do not like what apple is doing, as you and so many others have noted, to be so ANTI-APPLE-CONSUMER.

Do they not understand FRICTIONLESS? REMOVING BARRIERS? And even more old-fashioned: Customer/Consumer Choice?

Apple’s trend (like google & Facebook & so many): Corporate fascism.

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- 11
  
  hoakley on October 1, 2017 at 8:16 pm
  
  That’s odd. I downloaded (twice) and installed High Sierra (at least seven times), and although Sierra has vanished from my Purchased tab, El Capitan, Yosemite, and all the others are still there.
  Mind you, as this is a 2015 iMac, most of those old installers are of no use.
  Perhaps Apple only takes back those which might be useful?
  Howard.
  
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12

Jerry Fritschle on December 9, 2017 at 11:04 pm

Sierra is in a peculiar place, as it is only semi-compatible with APFS, which may translate into “just good enough to be dangerous.” In the absence of a Sierra update addressing this, it would appear that Apple is simply taking the position that any machine that can run Sierra can run High Sierra…therefore, on the APFS front, you’re either all-in or all-out.

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- 13
  
  hoakley on December 9, 2017 at 11:12 pm
  
  Thanks.
  In my experience, Sierra is essentially incompatible with the current High Sierra APFS. But that is Apple’s choice: it could quite easily have maintained APFS support in Sierra.
  And as my main working Mac is one of the many millions which Apple sold with a Fusion Drive, it can’t run APFS on that even in High Sierra. Again, that is Apple’s choice not to have invested sufficient resources in the development of APFS to ensure that, when High Sierra was released, it worked on all Macs.
  The snag with Apple’s choices is that they don’t coincide with a lot of users’ choices.
  Howard.
  
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14

Jerry Fritschle on December 10, 2017 at 1:22 am

Yes, another point release to Sierra wouldn’t have killed them. Heck, we’re waiting for an undetermined point release to get all of the features promised in High Sierra 🙂 This ties into what you and others have written about marketing, not engineering, driving their timelines.

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15

Clinton on August 29, 2018 at 2:20 pm

https://support.apple.com/en-za/HT208202

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