How to Fix macOS “Recovery Server Could Not be Contacted” Error

Dec. 9, 2020

Every so often you will likely find yourself in a situation where you need to completely reset and restore your Mac (which is why I keep hounding people to perform Mac backups regularly) . It could be because of a problem, or just because you want a clean slate with a fresh macOS installation. However, sometimes, when you’re in the Mac recovery mode trying to install macOS, you will see a “recovery server could not be contacted” error. If that’s happening to you, don’t worry, here’s how to fix macOS “recovery server could not be contacted” error.

Fix Recovery Server Could Not be Contacted in macOS

There are multiple possible solutions for this error. In this article, I will go through all of those methods, from the easiest to the most time consuming ones you can use. There are links to each method below to make it easier for you to get to the solution you want to try.

This might sound like a fairly obvious thing to do, but sometimes you will see that you aren’t connected to WiFi when you are trying to restore your Mac. Doing this is simple.

Click on the WiFi icon on the top right of your screen and make sure you are connected to your WiFi network.

If you are, and you’re still getting the error, move on to the next step.

One of the most common reasons your Mac may be unable to download the macOS installer is because of time and date differences. This happens quite often when you are in recovery mode, and it’s also a possibility if you are running macOS in avirtual machine. Fortunately, the fix is simple.

Try installing macOS again from the recovery and it should work.

If nothing seems to be working, you will need to install macOS using a bootable USB drive. This process requires a considerable amount of work on your part, but it’s not difficult. All you need is a USB flash drive with at least 16GB storage and a Mac that you can use to download the version of macOS you want to install.

We have a friendly step-by-step guide for performing afresh install of macOSthat you can check out and follow along.

Sometimes the “recovery server could not be contacted” error pops up when you’re simply trying to update your Mac to a newer version of macOS. In those situations, you can try the following steps instead.

One of the most common reasons your Mac may be unable to download the macOS installer is because of time and date differences. Fortunately, the fix is simple.

For Macs running software older than macOS Mojave

If you are not using macOS Mojave or newer on your Mac, do the following.

Note:If the command doesn’t work, try giving yourself superuser rights with the following command.

For Macs running macOS Mojave or later

Weirdly enough, Apple removed the ntpdate command with macOS Mojave, so the commands mentioned above won’t work for you. Fortunately, there is a substitute command for new Apple systems.

Note:Once again, if you get a “Operation not permitted” error, run the command with sudo, as shown below.

You can also try installing macOS usingterminal commandsthanks to Apple’s built in “softwareupdate” command.

If you know the version of macOS you want to install, use the following command:

For example, if you want to update tomacOS Big Sur, you can use macOS_version as 11.0.1 as shown below

Otherwise, you can also simply upgrade to the latest version of macOS available by using the following command

Note:This command, although useful, is buggy right now and sometimes you will get errors like ‘no update available’. What’s more, it only works on Catalina and above.

If you’re stuck updating macOS because of the buggy command that Apple officially supports, there’s another neat way to use the terminal and update your Mac.

Errors during installation or recovery can be quite annoying to face. Hopefully, this guide has helped you solve the issue with macOS recovery server and you have successfully installed macOS on your computer once again. In any case, if you are stuck on a step or just want to rant about Apple’s servers, feel free to comment down below.