How to back up iMovie & GarageBand etc. for El Capitan for future installs?

[EugW]

I know we can still install Apple apps from the App Store directly into El Capitan, but El Capitan is getting old now, and I suspect it will lose App Store support eventually. How do I back up these apps for future installs of El Capitan?

I'm interested because I have machines that cannot be updated past El Capitan. Same goes for High Sierra. For example, I'm typing this on a Mac Pro 2,1 and just picked up an original external FireWire iSight for it. It works fine in El Capitan with iMovie, but the last version of iMovie that runs on this machine is 10.1.6 from 2017.

Can I simply just copy these apps onto a backup drive? Will they work if I drag them back into a Mac's application folder? I'd also want to back up stuff like GarageBand and iWork. I wonder what other apps I should back up.

 

[LuisN]

I know we can still install Apple apps from the App Store directly into El Capitan, but El Capitan is getting old now, and I suspect it will lose App Store support eventually. How do I back up these apps for future installs of El Capitan?

I'm interested because I have machines that cannot be updated past El Capitan. Same goes for High Sierra. For example, I'm typing this on a Mac Pro 2,1 and just picked up an original external FireWire iSight for it. It works fine in El Capitan with iMovie, but the last version of iMovie that runs on this machine is 10.1.6 from 2017.

Can I simply just copy these apps onto a backup drive? Will they work if I drag them back into a Mac's application folder? I'd also want to back up stuff like GarageBand and iWork. I wonder what other apps I should back up.

You can just copy any apps that don't have an installer to an external drive. You shouldn't worry about that, 10.8 and 10.9 still have access to the App Store

 

[EugW]

You can just copy any apps that don't have an installer to an external drive. You shouldn't worry about that, 10.8 and 10.9 still have access to the App Store

OK thx. I'll try dragging the apps to a backup drive. Note though that this became a concern because I was having problems with 10.7's App Store.

So we probably still have a few years left with 10.11, but perhaps 10.8's App Store may become problematic sooner rather than later.

The OSes I'm most interested in are 10.7, 10.11, and 10.13 since these are the ones certain machines can't update past.