Also, the oldest OS an M1 Mac can run is Big Sur. You can’t install an old OS on top of a newer one. Mountain Lion runs on the Macs below, but you may not be able to downgrade to it unless you completely reformat the drive. Within OS X Utilities, choose Reinstall OS X. Prepare a clean external drive (at least 10 GB of storage). The following method allows you to download Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. Lion runs on Macs that came prior to the launch of Mountain Lion in 2012. Install older OS X onto an external drive. Is my Mac compatible with OSX Lion and Mountain Lion? Apple stopped charging for macOS updates with Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Strangely, Apple still sells Lion and Mountain Lion for $19.99 each. Mac OS X Mountain Lion installer free download (4.45GB).

Mac OS X Lion installer free download (4.72GB).

All that does is allow you to create a USB drive with the recovery HD on it. agree the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is a good choice to make a USB Recovery HD but that would not help the OP in the download area. To get Lion and Mountain Lion for free, you can visit the support documents for those OSes on Apple’s website: Question: Q: How to reinstall OS X Lion on macbook pro late 2011. But there’s good news: Apple is now offering Lion and Mountain Lion for free for anyone who wants them. Some people are still using OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and until recently, you had to pay Apple $19.99 to get download codes for those OSes. While macOS is currently on version 11 (otherwise known as Big Sur) and macOS 12 Monterey is coming later this year, there are plenty of folks who use old versions of the Mac operating system.

Free download os x lion for macbook pro