Mist Makes Downloading MacOS Installers & Firmwares Easy

Many Mac users, IT staff, and systems administrators like to have on hand full MacOS installers, for both current and prior versions of MacOS system software. Additionally, many advanced Mac users and IT professionals need to have readily available MacOS IPSW firmware files for performing restores to Apple Silicon Macs, for virtual machines, even for deployments, troubleshooting, or just simply reconfiguring and setting up a Mac. This is where the free Mist tool comes in, which makes it very easy to download any available MacOS IPSW firmware file, or any available version of MacOS installer.

While we maintain an updated list of all available versions of MacOS installers to download, and we’ve covered similar apps to Mist before like MDS, the Mist offers another option and perhaps an easier to use interface than MDS, and without some of the features of MDS that many more casual users won’t need. Plus, you can grab MacOS firmware IPSW files too, and that’s super handy. Mist is remarkably easy to use, here’s how it works:

How to Download Full MacOS Installers with Mist

1. Head to the Mist Github page here to download the Mist application for Mac (if you’re unfamiliar with downloading from Github this page should be helpful, or simply head to the ‘releases’ section and get the DMG from there)
2. Open the Mist application, then choose either the “Installers” or “Firmwares” tab
3. Find the version of MacOS you wish to download, either as an installer or IPSW, and click on the download button to begin

You’ll notice you can also toggle on a switch to show or hide beta versions of MacOS that are available to download, as well as a convenient toggle for only showing versions of MacOS that are compatible with the particular Mac that is running the Mist app.

Mist is super easy to use with a nice and simple interface, making it easy to find, search, and identify any available version of MacOS available to download, and to quickly be able to get that download going.

Remember that each MacOS installer file and IPSW firmware file is pretty large, often 15 GB or larger, so if you plan on downloading many different versions to have on hand, you’ll need substantial disk space available, or to use an external storage device to hold them.

While the MacOS firmware files only work on Apple Silicon Macs, they can be used for restoring a Mac, but also for setting up virtual machines really easily.

The MacOS installers are compatible with any Mac that the particular version of MacOS is compatible with, including Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. You can even narrow down to any version, or find new and old versions of MacOS to download with Mist, from MacOS Sequoia going all the way back to Lion (FWIW we have links to all versions of MacOS available to download here with the same range of versions, from the latest Sequoia to Lion, unfortunately Snow Leopard and Leopard links on Apple CDN’s stopped working so were removed, and those are not available on Mist either).

If having access to MacOS installers and firmware files is something that you require, or just find useful, be sure to grab Mist, it’s a free download, easy to use, and is quite convenient.