10.7: How to download the OS X Lion Installer on Lion

Aug 22, '11 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: mmnw

There's been a lot of talk lately how to get the OS X Lion Installer after you installed Lion. The main purpose of this may be to get the Installer dmg to create a bootable Installer disk, as described elsewhere. Many missed doing that before installation, me included.

But actually this hint will work to force download any purchase on the Mac App Store.

There's an easy method to force a download within the Mac App Store without any tinkering. It seems to be the official method, although I found no description of this in any of Apple's documentation.

So here's how to do it:

It's important to hold down the Option key twice. Once on the Purchased page, once on the Lion page. You also can't navigate to Lion directly, you need to open it from the purchases page. But if you follow this procedure you should find the Lion Installer within your Applications folder.

[crarko adds: I tried this with the Lion Installer and with TextWrangler, and it works as described. You will get the warning if you don't hold the Option key the second time. A handy thing to know.]

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