The OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder.

For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 drive-it makes things significantly faster.

An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive.We've created El Capitan USB stick from both Yosemite and El Capitan, but your experience with other versions may vary. A Mac that you have administrator access to, duh.There's the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Whatever the reason, you're in luck, because it's not hard to make one.Īs with last year, there are two ways to get it done. Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don't support the Internet Recovery feature. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive).

Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Further Reading OS X 10.11 El Capitan: The Ars Technica Review

How to install os x el capitan today