Where to Manually Download Software Updates for Mac
You can manually download software updates that are available for Mac and OS X, without having to go to the Mac App Store Updates section, or without running Software Update. This is helpful for many reasons, but it’s particularly nice if you’re troubleshooting or need to bring updates to a computer that is not connected to the internet.
You can download any of the Mac OS X Software Updates directly from Apple at the following website:
This is where you will find everything from updates to OS X, Combo Updaters for Mac system software, firmware updates, software updates, security updates, general software updates for Mac essentials, and much more.
You may want to bookmark that Apple URL for future reference, it’s very useful for retrieving software updates, and it is the only trusted source to obtain combo updates for Mac OS X, as well as security updates and other package and dmg based installers.
I recently needed to install some Mac OS X Software Updates on an older machine that couldn’t connect to the internet. This means the option to just go to the Software Update installer built into Mac OS wasn’t happening, but I knew that upgrading the system software was likely to help alleviate the problem. If you’re ever in this boat, all you need to do is visit Apple.com’s Software Updates site and you can manually download any of the available software updates as package files; iTunes, Aperature, Mac OS X, firmware updates, security fixes, any update Apple releases is available for download. Then all you need to do is copy these files from the machine you downloaded them onto to the machine that can’t connect to the internet, in my case I just used a USB key and installed them to the troubled MacBook from there.
I ended up fixing this Mac’s wireless problem by upgrading to the latest version of Mac OS and deleting it’s network preferences. An easy enough fix assuming you have another available machine to access the downloads with.
By the way, if the Mac does have internet access, you can also download and install software updates from the command line of OS X.
This link is invaluable for giving us Mac users a bit more control over what we want on our Mac and how how we want it; I love you <3 <3 <3
As happened with so many other things on Mac, it now appears that Apple has taken this control away — system updates to Monterey are not available using this method.
How would i install the software update from the USB?