Software Needs To Be Updated Mac

Information

Apple releases major Mac operating system updates annually, while minor system updates happen every two or three months. A new Mac OS is designed to improve user experience. However, many mac users found that a macOS update made their Mac not boot up. It could be really annoying when you urgently run your Mac, be it an iMac or a MacBook. This post will provide you with three steps. When your Mac doesn’t boot up, let’s keep on reading.

Eventually, Apple released a patch update to fix this issue. Hopefully the same will happen for macOS Catalina. Ensure your Mac and all your apps are fully up-to-date: From the menu bar on your Mac, go to Software Update. Download and install any available updates to macOS. Now open the Mac App Store and select Updates from the sidebar. Option 1: Keep Using an Outdated Version of macOS. Your first option is to carry on using your outdated Mac regardless of software status. You will still get security updates for the first two years, and your Mac should continue to function like it always has outside of any hardware issues you might face. There’s a simple way to find out if you’re still using any 32-bit apps. Click on the Apple menu About This Mac, then click the System Report button. Select Legacy Software in the sidebar. All legacy software is 32-bit. If you don’t see Legacy Software in the sidebar, select Applications in the sidebar, then check the list of apps on the.

Solutions to fix Mac not turning on after macOS update

Software needs to be updated macbook

Let’s go straight to the point; you are suggested to troubleshoot this issue by the following steps:

  1. Check if the Mac hard drive is corrupted.
  2. Check if any program is not compatible with your macOS
  3. Check for a hardware incompatibility.

Now you can take a look at each of the steps.

Step 1: Boot into macOS Recovery mode to check the Mac hard drive

If your Mac has problems booting up after the macOS update, it’s possible your Mac computer ran out of power, and the APFS reformatting process was interrupted, or the startup disk was corrupted. To rescue it, you are advised to check and repair the disk with Apple’s built-in disk repair tool, Disk Utility, under macOS recovery mode. Grab your attention to see how it works.

  1. Hold Command + R and start your Mac into macOS Recovery mode.
  2. Select Disk Utility from the macOS ‘Utilities’ window and click Continue.
  3. Click on View and choose Show All Devices to list all detected disks and volumes.
  4. Select the drive or volume that you want to repair in the left sidebar; here, it should be Macintosh HD.
  5. Click First Aid on the top menu of Disk Utility.
  6. Click Run to check and repair errors in this drive. Wait for the process.

If Disk Utility reports operation successful or repaired, you’re free to restart your computer. Nevertheless, another situation is no disk error is found by Disk Utility. It turns out the hard drive is not responsible for Mac not booting up, then what is the reason behind Mac not turning on? You can find the answer under Safe mode.

Step 2: Boot your Mac into Safe Mode

Safe mode can determine whether an issue is caused by software that loads when your Mac starts up since it will only launch some basic necessary programs. That means it can isolate incompatibility software that makes your Mac unbootable. Really helpful, right? Here’s what you should do:

  1. Press and hold the power button until the Mac forcibly shuts down.
  2. Restart this Mac with the Shift key pressed and held to start the Mac up in Safe Mode.
  3. Release the key when you see the progress bar.

Once you boot into Safe Mode successfully, you’ll see Safe Boot at the right top. And it indicates that the unbootable Mac is caused by third-party software incompatibility. You must be wondering who’s the culprit, don’t worry, Verbose mode can help you out.

You need to reboot the Mac, then hold Command + V at startup. What catches your eye is a live report, but it will stop at the misbehaving software that prevents the Mac from booting up. Now you have caught the culprit, and all you need to do is uninstalling it in Safe Mode.

Unfortunately, if you fail to boot into Safe Mode, it means it’s a macOS update failure. It would help if you reinstalled the macOS in Recovery mode, and reinstallation can place your data in danger. Therefore, before making any movement, you are strongly advised to restore your data with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac from an unbootable Mac first.

Step 3: Go to the Apple store for help.

You are here because your hard drive is safe and sound, and there’s no software incompatibility found in Verbose Mode. What else can you do to get rid of the trouble? Check the hardware inside your Mac. Please don’t be nervous; you are not required to do it yourself. Apple has many bricks-and-mortar stores, and you can easily get help there.

Further reading: Common boot problems after macOS Big Sur update

Coming with the biggest design update, macOS Big Sur made its appearance in June 2020. It’s the latest major release of the Mac operating system and now is in beta version. Up to now, known boot issues of macOS Big Sur Beta include the following.

  • If you updated to macOS Big Sur 11 beta from a previous version of macOS, Software Update might show “Unable to check for updates – Failed to download the documentation for the minor update. Please try again later”.
  • You might be unable to install macOS Big Sur 11 beta onto additional volumes.

If you have met these issues after updating to macOS Big Sur, feel free to try the above three solutions.

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If you’ve been a PC user before switching to Mac, you know what a truly seamless experience updating macOS is compared to Windows. For a while, you’d just download a new version from the Mac App Store. Now, you don’t even need to do that — updates automatically appear as a notification on your Mac. What’s more, they are completely free!

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Here’s how to update OS on Mac at any time:

  1. Go to System Preferences ➙ Software Update

  2. If there’s a MacBook update available, click Update Now

In 95% of cases, that’s all you need to do to update Mac software. However, very rarely, you might also see an error saying that the macOS installation couldn’t be completed or macOS update could not be installed or something similar. And there are a few ways to fix that.

What To Do To Get A MacBook Update

When you start analyzing what gets your macOS Big Sur install stuck, the first thing to pay attention to is the version of your Mac. As new and more feature-rich macOS updates appear, they stop supporting older Macs that are simply not powerful enough.

Here are all the Mac models supported by macOS Big Sur:

  • iMac (2014 or newer)
  • iMac Pro (2017 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (2013 or newer)
  • Mac Mini (2014 or newer)
  • MacBook (2015 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (2013 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (2013 or newer)

If you compare macOS Big Sur 11 system requirements to those of macOS Catalina, you’ll notice the latest version moved a year to two years ahead. So make sure you have a compatible Mac before trying to install an update.

Well, it’s technically possible to run Big Sur on even older Macs by installing a third-party patch, but this is not officially supported by Apple and is not generally recommended for the security of your Mac. Since macOS support usually lasts for more than five years on various Macs, it might be time to actually upgrade your setup — it’s going to serve you well.

Running a brand new Mac? Here are some more things to consider to make sure you never have your macOS update stuck again.

Check the system status at Apple

Being one of the largest tech companies in the world, Apple’s systems are very stable and rarely have a glitch. Still, fate might have it that you’ve tried to update Mac software exactly at the time when a server was undergoing maintenance.

To check that the Apple software update download problem is not on their end:

  1. Go to apple.com/support/systemstatus

  2. Look for macOS Software Update and see if it’s green

Make sure your WiFi network is up

If the problem is not with Apple’s network, it might be with yours. Having a volatile WiFi connection could easily be the reason behind the macOS installation couldn’t be completed error. Luckily, it’s easy to test:

  1. Visit speedtest.net and click Go to see your current internet speed

  2. Try switching to the Ethernet connection, if that’s an option

  3. Contact your internet provider for support

In case you still see your Apple software update downloading, maybe you should just give it some more time (e.g. a couple hours) and wait.

Restart the update and your Mac

Let’s say that a few hours have passed and your update doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere — just cancel the process if it’s downloading or restart your Mac, by holding the power button, if you find macOS update stuck in installation.

Update Mac software via App Store

It might come as a surprise for some, but Apple software update downloads are also available via Mac App Store. The only catch is that those updates have to be between major versions (e.g. Catalina ➙ Big Sur) and not minor releases of the same macOS.

So if you’re still running on Catalina:

  1. Open App Store on your Mac
  2. Type “Big Sur” in the search field
  3. Click Get

What if you need to get an incremental update? For example, macOS 10.15.3 to 10.15.4. You’re in luck, since Apple posts all its software versions on its website as well:

  1. Visit support.apple.com/downloads
  2. Click Download on any update that interests you
  3. Double-click the .dmg file from your Downloads folder to start the process

Set date and time to automatic

For one reason or another, you might have set your laptop to display custom time. Unfortunately, such a change might interfere with the MacBook update. To resolve this, try to set your time and date to be determined automatically:

  1. Go to System Preferences ➙ Date & Time

  2. Check the box next to “Set date and time automatically”

Go into Safe Mode

In some unique situations, you might have your Big Sur install stuck in black screen with no apparent ways out. Hold ⌘ + L to see the log of all activity and verify that no progress is being made. If not, it might be because some random processes are interfering with the proper installation, so you need to turn off your Mac and try to use it in Safe Mode.

Safe Mode starts up your Mac while blocking most of the external scripts, logs, or preferences, so nothing can get in the way of the system working properly.

Software Needs To Be Updated Macbook

To get your Mac in Safe Mode:

  1. Turn it off

  2. Press the power button while holding Shift

  3. Try to do the MacBook update once again

Software Needs To Be Updated Mac

Reset NVRAM on your Mac

A more involved step beyond getting into Safe Mode is wiping your non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) clean. NVRAM is used to store certain settings and preferences while your Mac is turned off, which could make it difficult to update Mac software if a logging error has crept in somewhere there.

To wipe out NVRAM, restart your Mac and hold ⌘ + Option + P + R. Then try to initiate the update once again.

Reinstall macOS in Recovery Mode

If neither Safe Mode nor resetting NVRAM helps, you could try the most definitive solution — reinstalling macOS in Recovery Mode.

Unlike Safe Mode, Recovery Mode basically forces you to get a brand new version of the operating system, preferably deleting all the contents of your hard drive in the process (using Disk Utility) to ensure that errors like “macOS could not be installed on your computer” don’t appear again in the future.

To reinstall macOS in Recovery Mode:

  1. Hold ⌘ + R when you’re restarting your Mac to get the same macOS. For the newest version possible, use ⌘ + Option + R.

  2. Choose Reinstall macOS out of the options given

  3. Click Continue

  4. Go through the installation process

Read more about how do I update my operating system on my Mac

How to restore your Mac from backup

For active Mac users who haven’t done much in the realm of optimization for a while, it’s strongly suggested to delete all their hard drive contents during the reinstallation of macOS using Disk Utility. Naturally, no one wants to lose years of their data — that’s why frequent backups are so essential.

Get Backup Pro is by far the most complete backup solution available today. You can easily do straightforward backups, and the app will compress the size of the archive by up to 60%, or you can do backups incrementally, only updating the files that have changed since the last backup. Other options include cloning your whole volume to a new external drive, so you can have your Mac with you anywhere on the go, and synchronizing folders between Macs to always have the same access to critical information.

What’s more, with Get Backup Pro you can schedule all the processes to never forget to update your backups and never lose more than a few days (or even hours) of data.

How to keep your Mac optimized

What if the macOS update could not be installed because your Mac is simply too old? Don’t despair, you can still get a lot of the perks of having a brand new macOS by properly optimizing your Mac.

Prepare Mac for new macOS

Software Needs To Be Updated Mac Os

Too much clutter and system junk can cause macOS installation problems. Get CleanMyMac X to optimize Mac before upgrading.

Software Needs To Be Updated Macbook Pro

CleanMyMac X will do wonders by instantly speeding up any setup you’ve got. It’s essentially a powerful system-wide booster that scans any areas of your Mac and finds ways to make them work better, whether that’s your browser, email client, RAM, or simply various useless logs sprinkled throughout.

To accelerate your Mac’s speed with CleanMyMac X:

  1. Open the app and go to Smart Scan

  2. Click Scan

  3. After the process is complete, select Review Details…

  4. Uncheck everything you don’t want to happen and hit Run

Repeat the process every few weeks and you’d be surprised how fast your Mac can be. And it doesn’t even have to be an old Mac — CleanMyMac X helps all!

How to monitor your Mac’s performance

So you’ve learned how to update OS on Mac, back it up with ease, and generally increase its speed. Now what? Basically, you need to make sure that none of those pesky errors ever happen again. In other words, you need a good monitoring solution.

iStat Menus is an all-in-one system data collector that’s always handily accessible from your menu bar. It shows your current CPU and GPU load, RAM availability, internal temperature, battery capacity, network bandwidth, and much more. The idea here is that you can spot your Mac underperforming in real time and fix the issue way before it becomes a problem. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say.

Now you can see that even if you thought the macOS installation couldn’t be completed, with the right approach it’s still possible. In addition, it’s highly recommended that you create frequent backups with Get Backup Pro, optimize your Mac with CleanMyMac X, and monitor its state for any inconsistencies with iStat Menus.

Best of all, Get Backup Pro, CleanMyMac X, and iStat Menus are available to you at no cost whatsoever through a seven-day trial of Setapp, a platform with more than 200 indispensable apps that would make every task on your Mac a breeze. Sign up today for free and see for yourself!

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