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Immediately hold the OPTION key until the boot selection menu appears on the display, then choose the “Install MacOS Catalina” drive at the boot menu. At the “macOS Utilities” screen, choose “Disk Utility”. In Disk Utility, select “Macintosh HD” (or the name of the disk to erase and clean install Catalina onto), then click the. I can see the answers suggested here on how to accomplish that: Mac stuck in restart cycle after failed macOS Catalina update. However, when trying to recover / reinstall macOS - the installer also tells me - you don’t have enough free space to reinstall macOS. To perform a clean re-install in Catalina, once in Recovery Mode, you need to delete your Data volume, that’s the one named Macintosh HD - Data, or something similar if you’re using a custom name, and to erase your System volume. Step 4: Reinstall macOS Catalina After you have erased your hard drive, you will want to reinstall Catalina. NOTE: If your Mac came with macOS Catalina, you can restart your Mac while holding down Shift-Option-Command-R to enter Internet Recovery Mode and install the operating system that came with your Mac.

Apple is ready to give you a change — the all-new macOS Catalina, available as a free download — so let’s get you all set.

There are two different options on how to upgrade. You can install Catalina over your current macOS, keeping all its data untouched. Or, you can get a fresh start with a clean install. The main benefit of clean installation is that you get rid of the system junk and leftovers which might hamper your Mac’s performance.

Get Setapp to get ready for Catalina

A complete toolkit of utilities that prepare your Mac for macOS Catalina install. Upgrade your Mac in minutes without losing any data.

One way or another, getting Catalina on your Mac is definitely worth a try. Look at the bells and whistles it brings along:

• A renewed iTunes experience — with dedicated apps for Music, Podcasts and Apple TV.
• Simplified porting of iOS apps to macOS.
• Sidecar for using your iPad as an additional screen.
• Major updates of your favorite native apps, including Photos, Reminders, and Find My.

And that’s only a small part of your new macOS experience. If you need more reasons, find a complete review of the new Catalina features here.

Prepare your Mac for the clean install

If you’ve seen the new Catalina, you must be excited to get your hands on the installer — we get it. But don’t dive right into the upgrade. Your Mac has to be ready. First thing, check device compatibility. The rules are not much different from the Mojave compatible Macs, except for a few older Mac Pro models that Catalina will no longer support. Here’s the full list:

• MacBook Air (2012 or newer)
• MacBook (2015 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (2012 or newer)
• Mac Pro (2013 or newer)
• Mac mini (2012 or newer)
• iMac (2012 or newer)
• iMac Pro (all models)

Found your Mac on the list? Congrats, you’re on the Catalina team. Just a few more things and you’re ready to install:

1. Get a USB drive with minimum 16GB of free space if you plan to install Catalina on a startup disk.
2. Backup your data and clean away all the clutter.
3. Note that it will take your Mac an hour or two to run the upgrade.

Choose your way to clean install Catalina

As we’ve said before, the healthiest method of clean installing the new macOS is by putting it on your startup drive. It’s your perfect choice if your Mac has a single non-partitioned drive where all the files are stored. Simply backup an entire drive and go ahead with the installation.

Another choice would be to test Catalina on a non-startup drive. If you have a spare drive or your startup drive is divided into volumes, this might be a good option to explore. Especially if you don’t want any files to go away.

Let’s dive into the details of clean installation.

Clean install macOS 10.15 on a startup disk drive

Again, this is the recommended option that will leave you with a high-performing Mac. It involves lots of cleaning and securing your files, though. You can take care of all the data stored on your old OS manually, or by using a few easy utilities. Let’s save your time and see how to do it real quick:

Remove junk from your Mac with CMM X

Download a powerful macOS cleaner to get ready for the Catalina upgrade. All the junk, leftovers and old caches will be gone in a moment.

Step 1. Get rid of the junk

Every ancient app leftover that is hiding somewhere in the depths of your Mac may potentially hinder its performance. That’s not what you want. CleanMyMac X can handle the junk before an upgrade. In one smart scan, the app will spot and remove everything — from outdated caches to file duplicates.

One more important detail, Apple will stop supporting 32-bit applications in the new macOS 10.15. So make sure you get rid of them, too. This will help you see the functionality that Catalina will be missing, and find the right alternatives in advance. In CleanMyMac X, navigate to the Uninstaller tab, filter apps by 32-bit, and click Uninstall. As easy as that. Find out what to do when scratch disks are full in photoshop.

CleanMyMac X is a nice utility to keep on your new macOS, too. In fact, it’s the quickest way to refresh an entire system and remove potential threats before they start affecting your performance. The app is available on Setapp — and so is the backup utility for your Mac we’ll talk about in a moment.

Step 2. Backup your drive

You want the redundant files to go. But you also want the needed files to stay. That’s easy with Get Backup Pro, one of the best backup apps for Mac. Unlike Apple’s native Time Machine, Get Backup Pro has the functionality of creating bootable clones — which gives you absolute peace of mind. In case there’s a tech problem with your Catalina installation, the drive can be recovered at any time.

We encourage you not to ignore the backup process. It will help you roll back at any time with minimum loss. Plus, it’s an easy way to move your files to the new OS in batch.

Read more information about Mac update

Step 3. Create a bootable Catalina installer

Before you clean install Catalina, we have to warn you there might be no going back. First, because macOS 10.15 is truly great. Second, because Apple removes an old macOS installer from the App Store once the new version is out. So if you want to have an exit plan, you’ll have to download Mojave installer in advance.

Here’s how you create Catalina installer:

1. Access the App Store and get the new macOS Catalina.
2. Wait for the download process to finish and click File > Quit as soon as the installer launches. Your installer will be stored in the Applications folder.
3. Connect your USB stick and go to Disk Utilities.
4. In the Erase tab, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as your format.
5. Name your USB stick and then click Erase > Done > close Disk Utility.
6. 6. Access Terminal and type the following command (make sure you replace [XXX] with your drive name):sudo /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/[XXX] --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app
7. Hit Return and type in your admin password.
8. When the process is finished, click Done and close Terminal.
9. Congrats, you’re a Catalina user — now officially.

Step 4. Get Catalina on your startup drive

Reinstall Music On Os Catalina

The final part. Your data is securely backed up, so you can go ahead and erase your startup disk drive:

1. Access System Preferences > Startup Disk and choose your Catalina installer.
2. Restart your Mac and hold Command-R.
3. Connect your bootable USB.
4. In the macOS Utilities window, click Reinstall a new copy of macOS.
5. Click Continue and agree to the terms and conditions.
6. Select your startup drive and click Install.

Once the new macOS gets on your Mac, it will be born anew. So yes, you will have to set it up — just like a new Mac. If you’ve used Setapp on the old macOS, you can quickly get your apps back by downloading the installer on setapp.com.

Clean install macOS 10.15 on a non-startup disk drive

If you don’t have a free, non-partitioned drive, you can install Catalina on a non-startup drive. Here are three easy steps:

Step 1. Erase your non-startup drive

If you install Catalina on a new drive, this is not for you. Otherwise, you’ll have to wipe everything away from the drive before using it. Navigate to Disk Utility, select your non-startup drive, and click Erase. If there’s any data you want to keep, use ChronoSync Express to sync it with another drive.

Step 2. Download the Catalina installer

Access your Mac App Store > Updates and grab the installer. Once the installer will launch automatically, quit — you don’t want to install it from there.

Step 3. Install Catalina to your non-startup drive

You’ll find the downloaded installer in your Applications folder and launch it. Select a drive — you’ll have to change it from “startup” to your target one. Follow the instructions and finish your installation.

Once your system is upgraded, set up your new Mac and make sure you try all the perks. And before you get frustrated that your favorite 32-bit app is missing, get Setapp — it surely has a decent alternative.

If you are a true macOS fan, check out the comparison of iOS and macOS adoption trends below:

Easy way to Clean Install mac OS Catalina

macOS Catalina is Apple’s shiny new operating system for the Mac and it’s got a ton of great features and improvements. You’re probably keen to get started and install it straight away. Before you do, consider whether you want to install it over the top of your current OS, or as a completely clean install of macOS Catalina. The benefits of the latter are that it will be like a completely new Mac, with all your settings wiped out, and junk files gone. It should make your Mac run faster. The rest of this article will explain how to clean install macOS Catalina.

Before the clean installation of macOS 10.15 Catalina it’s recommended that you first delete junk and dusty files from the current macOS. There are many free and paid tools to clean junk but the quickest option is to run CleanMyMac X. You can expect to free up tens of gigabytes of space, including old apps, and their leftovers.

Here’s how it works.

1. Download and install CleanMyMac — try a free edition of the app here
2. Choose the System Junk tool.
3. Press Scan.
4. When it’s finished either press Remove to get rid of all the files it recommends, or choose Review to look through what it’s found and decide for yourself what to delete and what to keep.

Backup your Mac

I can’t stress how important this is. You must backup your Mac before you do anything else. You’re going to be erasing your startup drive completely, so you need a complete backup of everything. You can use Time Machine, another backup app, or a cloning tool. Just make sure you have a complete, preferably bootable, copy of your current installation.

You should also make notes of settings for apps you use regularly – screen grabbing them is a good way to do that. And you should make sure you have a copy of any licence codes that you’ll need when you reinstall applications. You can use Apple’s Notes app to make notes, as long as you sync them with iCloud.

Create a bootable installer of macOS Catalina

If you’re reading this after Catalina ships, you can download it from the Mac App Store and then choose Quit when the installation starts. If you’re clean installing the beta (and, by the way, that’s not something I would recommend. It’s much better to create a dual boot system when you run the beta.

1. Grab a USB stick with a capacity of at least 16GB, or an external hard drive or USB.
2. Go to Applications>Utilities and launch Disk Utility.
3. Launch Disk Utilities and Erase the Drive or USB stick, formatting it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS and selecting GUID partition map if a selection is available.
4. The easiest method for creating a bootable installer is to use DiskMaker X. However, if you’re comfortable using Terminal, you can do it like this:
   1. Launch Terminal from Applications>Utilities
   2. Type: sudo /Applications/Install macOS Catalina Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Catalina Beta.app where ‘Untitled’ is the name of your USB stick or external hard drive
   3. Press Return and wait for the word Done to appear in Terminal.

Once you see ‘Done’ in Terminal you can quit it. Your USB stick or external hard drive is now a bootable Catalina installer, so keep it safe. Now, it’s time to clean install macOS Catalina.

Mac Os Catalina Reinstall

How to Clean install macOS Catalina

Now you've made a backup and created a bootable installer, it's time to actually install the new macOS. Follow these easy steps to clean install macOS Catalina on your Mac.

1. Plug your USB stick or external hard drive into your Mac, if it’s not plugged in already.
2. Restart your Mac while holding down the Option key.
3. When you see the options for booting appear on screen, choose the installer disk you just created.
4. When you see the macOS Utilities screen appear, choose Disk Utility
5. When Disk Utility launches, choose the Eras tab then select your startup volume (probably called Macintosh HD).
6. Give your startup disk a name, then choose a format. If you have a recent Mac with an SSD startup disk, select APFS. If you have an older Mac with a mechanical hard drive or Fusion Drive, choose whichever one you want to use.
7. Choose Erase.
8. When Disk Utility has finished erasing the disk, quit it to return to the macOS Utilities screen.
9. Choose Install macOS.
10. Press Continue and choose the drive you just erased and re-formatted as the destination.
11. MacOS Catalina will start to install.
12. When it’s finished, your Mac will restart and it will look like a brand new Mac. Go through the set-up process to set up a user account, add your wifi network, choose a language, and log in to iCloud.

Once you’ve set up your Mac, you can eject the installer disk and remove it. Remember to keep it safe. You can now restore files you backed up earlier from Time Machine or whichever backup tool you used. Remember to restore files and folders individually, don’t, for example, restore your entire user directory otherwise you’ll copy back all the junk files you just got rid of. Reinstall applications and go through them adding license details where necessary. Check that everything works as you expect it to and use the screen shots you made earlier to configure settings.

There are lots of good reasons why you might want to clean install macOS Catalina, but the most important one is that it should make your Mac feel like new and keep it running smoothly. For ultimate Mac refresh you can also download CleanMyMac X and play with its cleanup tools. Getting rid of old junk feels great.