How To Safely Install The OS X Yosemite Beta

How To Safely Install The OS X Yosemite Beta

The OS X Yosemite public beta is out, and since it’s beta software, you need to exercise some caution before you install it. That doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all the fun. Here’s how to install the beta without messing up your whole system.

Basically, what you’ll want to do is download the beta, create a second partition on your hard drive, then dual boot into it. (If you signed up for the beta you should have download instructions in your inbox. If you haven’t received that email, head here, enter your info, and you’ll be sent a redemption code.)

With this approach, you can keep your smoothly-running Mavericks operating system around for when Yosemite inevitably doesn’t work. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
  2. Select your Mac’s hard drive.
  3. Select the Partition button.
  4. Click the “+” icon and decide how large a partition you want (10-30 GB for Yosemite and a few apps should be fine, depending on how much you plan on using it).
  5. Name your partition and click Apply.
  6. Launch the Yosemite installer.
  7. When prompted to choose a disk, click “Show all disks” and select the partition you just created.

That’s it. Just wait for the installer to run, and you’ll have Yosemite on a second system. To get to it, just hold down the Option key when you boot up your system and select the Yosemite partition.


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