by Aaron K. | General in

This copy of the Install OS X Mavericks application can’t be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.

After following the instructions on creating install media for Mac OS X Mavericks, I repeatedly got the error message “This copy of the Install OS X Mavericks application can’t be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.” After some web searching, I came across Jonathan Mohar‘s blog with the bit that did the trick! You simply have to set the date on your computer before you attempt the installation.

  1. From Utilities menu, pick Terminal
  2. Set the date using the command: date 110216472013.53
  3. (Optional) You can get an actual current date from another machine in the Terminal with the command: date “+%m%d%H%M%Y.%S”
  4. Then type exit to exit the terminal, or command-Q. The installer comes back up, and all is well.

Thanks, Jonathan! =)

UPDATE: Try a more current date, like 072415382014.20 – this may work better than the one in the post above, at this point. Best to get a fresh one using that command, if you can.

 

Aaron K.

Aaron Kondziela is a technologist and serial entrepreneur living in New York City.

 

44 thoughts on “This copy of the Install OS X Mavericks application can’t be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.”

  1. Thank you so much for this!!! I’ve been trying to solve this issue for a few days now. I had read about changing the date, but since I am doing a clean install I couldn’t just go to the settings to change it. Using this terminal command worked perfectly.

    Big thanks

  3. That was great! I’ve been looking on how to solve this problem for an hour but I had no idea how to set the time manually. Thank you so much for sharing!

  6. After downloading Mavericks 4 times over Verizon wireless and continuously getting “This copy of the Install OS X Mavericks application can’t be verified….” then trying it once on DSL and getting a perfect download/install, I think it’s clear that apple store’s data validation over wireless sucks.

    I’ve not had any trouble with any other application from other sources using the same wireless.

    If you are using a wireless connection to get Mavericks and it keeps breaking, I would suggest trying a nailed up internet connection instead.

  7. Ya know, I had this problem also. It’s such a large download, there’s a higher chance it’ll be corrupted. If only we could download a file and run an MD5 checksum on it to verify, like the rest of the world can do!

  8. OMG. Great job. Thank you very much.
    I change date to actual and everything goes fine.

  9. Damn – i have been working hard to find a solution for this problem !
    Thanks – Aron 😉

  11. Man, you saved me a lot of time.
    I was trying to install mavericks from scratch on my macbook pro, because I replaced the hard drive with an ssd, but the installer kept giving me the ‘can’t be verified’ error.
    Thanks a lot.
    Greetings from Brazil.
    Sorry for my bad english

  14. I tried the date change in terminal and I get: “operation not permitted” 🙁 Really frustrating. Any oterh suggestions?

    I have a Macbook Pro with OS X Lion 10.7.5, Late 2011, so it meets the requirements for this install.

  16. I wish I could say the above suggestions worked for me, but they didn’t. 🙁
    Also, the date and time in my terminal already were correct. I tried to change it anyway based on the above comments but got an error message.

    Any other ideas?

  18. I haven’t had to battle this error message many times, so I don’t have a ready suggestion for you. However I did see others suggest that the Mavericks download process sometimes would produce a corrupted file, so you may want to try getting a fresh copy. Otherwise, keep at it and cross your fingers! Good luck!

  19. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!! You just saved me from losing anymore of my sanity!! Doing a clean install of OS X Mavericks from a flash drive. Did it first with my MacBook….flawless. Then used the same flash drive on my Mac Mini & got this message. After several days of trying different things & getting impatient with time machine restore here I am!! Thank you sooooo much!! My download only has 2 minutes left!! Woohoo 🙂

  20. FYI…..For me, I tried to put the current date & time in & I still got this message…..eventually I just put the numbers in exactly as they are posted in the example & viola!! No more message!! Install is done & my Mac Mini is restarting 🙂

  27. THANK YOU VER MUCH!!!
    Finally the problem is solved and I can install Mavericks on a new drive!

  29. for anyone this didn’t work for, also try disabling any hard drive or display sleeping or power saving on your computer. this might interfere with the download.

  30. MASSIVE THANK YOU!

    was doing a clean install of mavericks on a customers laptop after afew mins of searching i found this

    i tried it with 2013 and it didnt work so i just changed the 2013 bit to 2014.

    THANKS

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  39. The date fix wasn’t working for me. I was setting the correct date, kept getting the error.
    On a hunch, I set the date to the “Modified” date for the “Install OS X …” application and it worked like a charm.

  40. Hi, had the same problem as Brad F. tried the same solution with the same date for the system as for the “Install OS X Mavericks.app” file, AND IT WORKED! 🙂 🙂 🙂

    Many thanks Brad for the idea 🙂

  41. I needed to do a clean installation of Mavericks on an iMac desktop. I made a Mavericks USB installation flash drive in 2014 which has worked numerous times but was now reporting the install could not be verified. The system date was correct to the actual real-time date of 2016. As a last resort before rebooting and trying another idea, I used terminal to set the date to 2014 from your example and Mavericks installed without error. Thanks for the tip.

  44. Solved. Thank you.

    However, I needed to change the date, in the Terminal (during the install process), prior to the date of the installer package itself.

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