If you get fed up watching the progress bar crawl along when updating your Mac to a new version of macOS, a Reddit thread has a useful hint to speed things up: using a Terminal command instead …
The original post suggested using a couple of command lines to perform the update:
To give a rough time estimate, it took around 10 mins to install the latest version of macOS 12.6 just now, and my MacBook Pro was only unusable for about 2 mins while it rebooted.
softwareupdate -l softwareupdate -i -a
The first checks for updates, and the second installs them. You then need to reboot when prompted.
But others in the thread suggested ways to further increase the efficiency of the process.
and:
As with any software update, always ensure you have an up-to-date backup first.
sudo softwareupdate -ia && sudo reboot
The reboot will then only happen if the first command succeeds. If it fails the reboot won’t happen and you’ll be able to see the errors.
Edit: Even even better:
sudo sh -c “softwareupdate -ia && reboot”
With my first example, if the software update takes a long-ish time, the timeout for sudo asking for a password will expire, and the sudo reboot will sit waiting for your password.
The 2nd version wraps both commands into a mini shell script, with a single sudo, so there’s no second sudo to possibly time out.
Of course, no Reddit OS thread is complete without the obligatory editor wars, so you’ll be reassured to know that participants waste no time in debating the merits of vim versus nano …
