Force Re-Download of El Capitan from the App Store?

Solution 1:

Here's how I did it! - Open Mac App Store - Go to Purchased - Look for El Capitan - Hold the Option Key + Click Download, you should see the progress bar in front of it.

You're done!

Solution 2:

I had the exact same issue. The culprit, in my case, was that I had older versions of the installer in other locations on my drive.

The solution was to move all older versions to the Trash and reboot. I did not empty the Trash, however (just in case). Upon rebooting, the App Store behaved and I was able to re-download the complete OS 10.11.4 installer. Then I emptied the Trash of all of the older versions.

Solution 3:

Same problem on my MacBookPro6.1 17" Mid-2010. In my case, the solution was taking these steps:

1. Signed Out of App Store;
2. Searched for "El Capitan" by using the App Store search bar;
3. Clicked on "El Capitan" on the search results;
4. Clicked on the button to get it;
5. Provided my email/pass when App Store asked for them;
6. Confirmed App Store question to buy it.

After these steps, the download started immediately. When the download was finished, the file "Install OS X El Capitan.app" was placed on "/Applications" folder.

Solution 4:

Had this exact problem. Tried the Sign-out of App store recommendation and still failed. When the store is trying to download the OS X El Capitan installer app, it scans all your mounted drives to see if you already have the installer. If it finds an older El Capitan installer app (in my case I saved a backup copy on a separate volume to free up space on my startup drive), it will determine you're ineligible for download of the full installer app and point you to install the update from the Updates store instead. Even if I clicked Continue, the download would just do a spinning sprocket and never prompt me for my App Store log-in. Once I unmounted my backup volume with the old installers, the App Store prompted me for log-in and began the download of the latest El Capitan installer app.