Open the macOS Catalina page on the App Store and click Get . This will download the full installer (approximately 8GB) to your Applications folder.

Note for Windows hosts: You will need to run specific command-line configuration scripts (VBoxManage commands) to spoof an Apple hardware CPU profile before launching the machine. 2. Setting Up on VMware Workstation / Player

There are two primary official ways to get the "Install macOS Catalina.app" file on a Mac:

Files can become corrupted during transfer (network interruptions, hardware issues) or be intentionally modified with malware. Comparing hash values (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) confirms whether your file matches the original.

It is strongly recommended to only download macOS Catalina 10.15.7 from official Apple sources

This transforms the temporary file into a usable ISO (technically a CDR, which works as an ISO).

mv ~/Desktop/Catalina.cdr ~/Desktop/Catalina.iso Important Requirements

Create a new VM, select as the type, and choose Mac OS X (64-bit) .

shasum -a 256 /path/to/Catalina.iso

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.15.7

or through the App Store, you may need to convert the installer into an ISO format if you intend to use it for virtual machines or non-Mac hardware. Direct Download Links & Methods Official App Store (Recommended) : You can download the full installer directly from the Apple App Store

Convert the dmg to iso: hdiutil convert /tmp/Catalina.dmg -format UDTO -o /tmp/Catalina.cdr