Apple presented OS X El Capitan (10.11) on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The latest operating system for Mac is based on the smart user-interface design that users first encountered in OS X Yosemite.
A couple of features are present in the current version of the OS. Notable mentions go to the Split View screen, Spotlight and Smarter search, Mission Control, improvements to Mail app, new Notes app capacities, faster graphics and accelerated performance.
Even if users can replace Yosemite with El Capitan through the Mac App Store, performance problems or post-update bugs may lead them to employing a clean installation of the OS instead.
Here's how to do it using the simple and efficient USB flash method.
What To Do
1. OS X El Capitan is supported on devices that already have the Yosemite OS: iMac (mid 2007 or newer), MacBook (late 2008 Aluminium or early 2009 or newer), MacBook Pro (mid or late 2007 or newer), MacBook Air (late 2008 or newer), Mac mini (early 2009 or newer), Mac Pro (early 2008 or newer), and Xserve (early 2009).
2. Using the Mac App Store, users have to download OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The standard location for downloads is the Applications folder.
3. Use an external hard drive to back up all important user data, as well as personal settings. This can be done using any third-party software or the proprietary Time Machine app.
4. Take a USB flash memory with 8GB or more, and make it bootable.
How to Make a Bootable USB Flash Drive
Using Disk Utility, make the USB flash drive bootable:
1. After connecting the USB drive to your computer, open Applications and launch Disk Utility.
2. Choose the USB drive from the left sidebar and click on the Erase tab.
3. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the box and leave "Untitled" as the standard name.
4. Hit the Erase button and wait for the complete formatting of the USB.
5. Open the Partition tab and, from the Partition Layout drop-down menu, select 1 Partition. Verify if "GUID Partition Table" is selected as the partition scheme in the Option section, with its name set to "Untitled."
6. Download El Capitan via the Mac App Store. Change the name of the recently downloaded file to "Install OS X Elcapitan.app" so you can easily identify it. Quit the installer.
7. Go to the Applications/Utilities folder and double-click the Terminal app. Enter the following command exactly as shown here:
sudo /Applications/Install OS X Elcapitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X Elcapitan.app --nointeraction
The bootable USB flash drive takes around 10 to 20 minutes to complete. Do not touch the Terminal and do not remove the flash drive during the process. The "Copy Complete. Done" message signals that the process is over.
With the bootable USB flash drive ready, a clean install of OS X El Capitan is just around the corner.
How to Clean Install OS X El Capitan on Your Mac
1. Verify if the newly created bootable USB flash drive is safely connected to your Mac. Restart the computer and press the Option key (Alt) when you hear the startup chime during the boot sequence.
2. Select USB drive on the startup drive selection screen and press Enter/Return on the keyboard.
3. In a few minutes, the setup of the El Capitan installer should appear.
4. Select Disk Utility. Click Continue.
5. Choose Macintosh HD from the left hand-side pane and click on the Erase tab on the top-right portion of the window. Simply click on the Erase button at the bottom right while leaving every setting in default. Keep in mind that this process will delete all data on your startup hard drive.
6. When the erasing process is over, go back to the main screen showing Disk Utility. Click Install OS X and click Continue.
7. After selecting the erased Macintosh HD section (from step 5), hit Install.
If you followed all the instructions correctly, you should now enjoy the upgraded UI from OS X El Capitan, alongside the new features of the OS.
