Operating macOS on a Virtual Machine and you would like to how to upgrade to macOS Mojave and Catalina? If so, that’s a perfect move. I mean, there are several cool features to enjoy with this new release. But how do you go by it? Well, in this guide, we have provided a step by step tutorial to make sure that you upgrade to avoid losing your data and ensure that the upgrade is successful. In this post, we are going to focus on the best 2 available tutorial, upgrade Mojave to Catalina and upgrade Catalina to new version.
Options 1: Upgrade Mojave and Catalina on VMware
Step 1: Upgrade to new VMware Player 15.5.0
If you are running macOS Mojave on Vmware, make sure that you have the latest version. Only this release has enough resources to support macOS Catalina. If you are not running on the newest release, go ahead and download. Here are the step by step instructions.
- Open VMware Player Link and look for free version 15.5.0.
- Click on the green download button located on the top right corner of the download page. This will download the installer to your computer.
- Once downloaded, double click on the exe.
- After your computer starts again, double click on the exe file to finish the installation.
- Once the installation is complete, a popup window will appear. Click on Finish to close the installation wizard.
Step 2: Edit VMX File for macOS Catalina
Navigate to virtual machine containing the “Virtual Machine configuration” file. If you didn’t specify, the default location will be Document > Virtual Machine. Once you’ve found it, right-click on it. Select Open the file with Notepad.
Find the code: guestOS = “darwin18-64” and replace it to guestOS = “darwin19-64”. Scroll down to the bottom of texts and add this code: smc.version = “0”
Click on File tab then Save the VMX file, darwin19-64 is new macOS Catalina. Open your VMware and you will see VMware player 15.5 now support macOS Catalina.
Step 3: Download and Install a Catalina
Using the steps, explained previously, download macOS Catalina, and configure your virtual machine. With your VMware configured, you can go to the last step and install macOS Catalina.
- Turn on VMware Player, select your virtual machine then click on Power on the virtual machine.
- Download a new version of macOS Catalina from Mac Apps Store.
- After the download has completed, the installer will start running.
- Go ahead and follow that wizard instruction to install macOS Catalina on your VMware.
Options 2: Upgrade Catalina and Mojave on VirtualBox
Step 1: Customize your VirtualBox with new Boot Disk
Ensure that the installation has completed successfully, you need to turn off your Virtual Machine then open your VirtualBox, and select edit your macOS. In the hard disk tab, click on the "Add" button. And open a new "Update Image".
Update Image: Download Here
Step 2: Download and install new macOS Catalina
Download macOS Catalina from the App Store/Apple website Once everything is backed up, you can then go ahead with the process. The first thing will be downloading macOS Catalina from the App store and here is the process.
- Launch App store using your current macOS Mojave.
- On the search bar, type macOS Catalina and press enter.
- Once it shows up, click on the install button.
- Once the installation is complete, click on "Restart" button.
Step 3: Complete the Installation
You can now go ahead and complete the installation after the boot disk has been added. To do this:
- Once running again, open the UEFI Shell Screen.
- And finally type in the following command Type: “update.nsh” to boot to the Catalina installation.
If you were looking for information on how to upgrade macOS Mojave to Catalina in Virtual Machine or upgrade Catalina to new version, this guide will help you with everything there is to know. In case you experience any errors or problems, you can always use the internet or recheck the steps to see where you went wrong. At the end of it all, you will be running on the all-new macOS Catalina. And with it, there are a lot of features that you will be in a position to enjoy. All the best in your endeavors!
With VB, trying to upgrade from Catalina 10.15 to 10.15.2 when I reboot, I press esc; then I type fs1:\update.nsh (after having added the virtual disk to the Virtula Machine). At a certain point I get:
…
and the shell stops…
I tried both in developer and in non-developer mode.
Any advice?
Thank you!
Hi. You should upgrade to new version before add Virtual Boot disk. Try!
This worked great and now my Catalina 10.15.1 is running perfectly on VMware Player 15.5. However, after upgrading it, VMware Player no longer shows MacOS as an option to create new virtual machines. Will there be a new…
Thanks for all your awesome work.
Hi. You can create a virtual machine with Windows 64x, then edit your GuestOS in VMX File for macOS.
I got a error message: “Guest operating system ‘darwin19-64’ is not supported.”
Hi Tommy. Do you install new VM 15.5?
The command did not work.
Hi. What is commands? Can you explain?
I suspect this is on VirtualBox – I just built a system from scratch and tried this…
I worked though the script and all appears sensible but the final call to boot.efi, which does exist, in the update package simply makes the system hang. No output at all to the efi shell window so I suspect it fails very early on. Not sure why ……. but I am still looking.
Tried this on Vbox 5.2 and 6.0 and both act the same.
Thank. I’ll check this problem!
…… more info. With the mac in developer mode (which is where I was on the previous post) it won’t update to “10.15.2 beta 3” from “10.15.0” – it just hangs when trying to boot from boot.efi. Take the mac out of receiving beta versions and mine updated to “10.15.1” so think this is more to do with the specific update or the mode that the mac is in (i.e. developer mode as I call it) than the procedure!
Tried to update from “10.15.1” to “10.15.2 beta 3” and it failed again. So it looks like there is an issue with the latest beta and VirtualBox. When the next beta or release comes out i’ll try and post the results.
Hi John,
I use your tutorial to update catalina from 10.15 to 10.15.1 in VMWare 15.5, but it doesn’t work. When the update package has been installed, the system could not show the desktop and quit automatically after reboot. Would you have any other advices? Thx.
Hi. Do you edit VMX file? Can you give me a screenshot?
I found the “guestOS” in VMX file had been changed as your tutorial by VMWare, so I had no idea to figure it out. Eventually, I had to reinstall catalina with 10.15.1 image as your previous tutorial, and it worked well. Maybe I’ll try it again when 10.15.2 is released.
Thank Jed!
Thanks John. Upgrade to vmware 15.5.1 made everything work fine.
However I noticed the following when trying to update a Catalina VM that was using Clover to boot from: Booted via clover on VMware 14.1.7 and 15.1 but skips clover on version 15.5.1. I upgraded the VM on the VMware 15.5.1 installation without any of the settings that were in the clover config as it was skipped during boot – i.e. booted just as if Clover was not installed….
Anyone got any ideas why Clover (version 5033) is not working with VMware 15.5.1?
OK. I think I have solved this one. Looks like VMware 15.5 boots preferentially into macOS with a legacy boot and so ignores the EFI partition on the first drive. It also appears to search SATA drives in their device order. So create another small drive and put only an EFI partition on it along with the EFI data. Make this drive SATA-0,0 and the original one (main 40GB or whatever) SATA-0,1 and it boots into Clover and then onto macOS. Deleting the .nvram file is often required to erase old boot device locations as these seem to also get… Read more »
Ok, my friend!