Comment by brewmarche a day ago
I don’t know, I’ve performed numerous updates from the pre-installed Mavericks (Yosemite, El Capitan, High Sierra, Big Sur are the ones I remember, might be more), but the default recovery still goes into Mavericks for me
Big Sur Recovery mode works for me with Option+Cmd+R, so if needed I can install that. What I meant is that the other goes into Mavericks Recovery mode. And I’m happy about that actually :-)
Edit: if you were referring to Option+Cmd+R anyway, I guess I misread
Edit2: by other one I meant Shift+Option+Cmd+R, just Cmd+R actually goes into Big Sur, you are right!
Yeah, there are a few keyboard combinations that do different things.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102655
> On an Intel-based Mac:
> If you used Command-R to start up from the local Recovery system, you get the current version of the most recently installed macOS.
> If you used Option-Command-R to start up from Internet Recovery, you might get the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.
> If you used Shift-Option-Command-R to start up from Internet Recovery, you might get the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.
There is another one, you can hold Option while booting and it will show disks to boot from. But there is also a SSID dropdown to do internet recovery like Shift+Option+Command+R.
You might need to update the firmware for your Mac in order for the Internet Recovery to support updating to Big Sur. The firmware updates are installed at upgrade time usually, but you may be able to install them separately.
> About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers
https://support.apple.com/en-us/101198
I would see if you can access this:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-big-sur/id1526878132
Download it, then you can make a bootable flash drive if you want, or just install it from under macOS.
> How to download and install macOS
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662
> Create a bootable installer for macOS
https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578