MacOS – Mac had High Sierra, had to install Lion from Internet Recovery into a new hard drive, can’t install High Sierra

high sierramacosupgrade

I had Mac OS High Sierra on my laptop. I have had some errors on my laptop's hard drive. I bought an SSD and had to install Mac OS Lion from Internet Recovery. I see ads for a free Mac OS High Sierra upgrade, but it says I need Mac OS 10.8 or later (I have 10.7.x installed). How can I get back to Mac OS High Sierra?

Best Answer

You should be able to do the following:

  1. Launch the Mac App Store app
  2. Select the Purchased tab
  3. Look through your purchased items to find OS X Mountain Lion (Note: There's nothing stopping you from also selecting either OS X Mavericks or OS X El Capitan)
  4. Now click on the Download option on the right of the listing

This will download the OS X installer allowing you to upgrade from OS X Lion. Once you're upgraded, you'll then have the option/ability to upgrade to macOS High Sierra.

NOTE: If you can't see your Purchased list, or download the item, make sure you're actually signed into your account (i.e. look under the Store menu).

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