How to partition a Mac hard drive or SSD, or create an APFS volume. We have a more guide to this process, which we recommend you read if you have any problems here: Select the Home volume and click on the + button to create a new volume.It’s likely you have one called Home or Macintosh HD. This will make sure you can see the volumes within your disk. Click the drop-down menu beside the View button in the toolbar and choose Show All Devices.Open Disk Utility (you can find it in the Utilities folder in Applications, or just press Command + Space and start typing Disk Utility).Back up your Mac (because it’s always wise to do that before you go on an adventure).If on the other hand you are using an older verison of macOS, or even Mac OS X, it’s a little more complicated, but we will also run through that process below.

So, if you are using APFS you can create a APFS volume as we will show you below, and then just install the new version of the operating system on that volume. Luckily you don’t have to wipe anything if you are just creating a volume. Guide to using Time Machine, which is Apple’s software for backing up.īe prepared to wipe everything: If you are in an older version of macOS when you partition your Mac you will have to completely wipe it! If you want to keep your current work, you need to create a backup of your Mac and ensure it will fit on your smaller partitioned drive. We show you how toĬreate a backup of your Mac here. It’s always wise to make sure you back up your Mac before you do anything like this, just in case it all goes horribly wrong. How to delete apps), delete any files and folders you don’t need,Ĭopy your huge photo library onto an external drive, considerīack up: The next important step is to back up. Make some space: If you want to carve your Mac up so that you can run two versions of the OS you will need space. We will assume that you are running a more recent version of macOS so we will focus on creating a second volume, but we do coverīefore you start, regardless of which version of macOS you are running, you should be aware of the following:

On older versions of Mac OS X and macOS you would have needed to partition your Mac, while in more modern versions of the Mac operating system you create a volume. There’s another point of confusion when it comes to dual booting. If you’re a software developer and need to test your own apps on different versions of macOS (particularly if you need to do this regularly).īeta version of the Mac operating system without committing to it (or risking it causing problems with the apps and data on your Mac).Creating a dual boot could be a good solution if you need to run those apps. If you want to update your Mac to the latest software, but you have legacy apps that may not run on it.There are a few reasons why you might want to run two versions of the Mac operating system, which is essentially what dual-booting means:

Dual booting mac and linux