Why this happens isn’t entirely clear, but it appears that users who are updating to OS X 10.10 may randomly encounter the issue, while Mac users who are clean installing OS X Yosemite will not, suggesting it could be related to tmp files, caches, third party apps, a large file system, or other system files that are being handled or cleaned up from the prior OS X version. This is another situation where waiting is the best idea. This shows exactly what’s being transferred or copied, rather than relying on the inaccurate status bar.Īnother similar apparently stuck issue can also happen during the installation reboot, with the Mac being frozen on the startup screen, with the familiar Apple logo  appearing on a white or black background with a progress bar not moving.

If you want to watch what’s going on behind the scenes, hit Command+L to bring up the installation log.

In other words, sometimes the installation progress bar and time remaining indicator are wildly inaccurate when installing OS X Yosemite, but fortunately just being patient almost always resolves it. Even though the progress bar may get stuck on 1 minute remaining, 5 minutes remaining, 15 minutes remaining, or any other number, it may stay at that remaining number for several hours as the installation actually completes. The solution to this is incredibly simple wait it out.

Stuck with 10.6.8 software