I’d sent in a question (see below) re Turbotax giving me a “read only message” after downloading on my Mac andOpus 17 had kindly made the time to respond so thank you very much for that. I think I followed Opus 17’s instructions below to the letter but after trying to reinstall Turbotax once again, I am still getting the same error message.
- I clicked on the download link from the Costco email with the Software Activation Keys and it downloaded the .dmg file.
- A box opens up showing an icon for Turbotax with a “drag this to the applications folder” which I did. Turbotax 2025 shows up in Applications.
- I went into my downloads folder on the Mac, found the Turbotax.dmg file and deleted it.
- I then emptied my trash.
Went back to applications and clicked on the Turbotax 2025 icon and after a few seconds, I get exactly the same message as previously “TurboTax is on a read-only volume. TurboTax can't be updated when it's running from a read-only volume like a disk image or an optical drive. Move TurboTax to your Applications folder and relaunch it from there".
Thank you.
Turbotax install fails on my Macbook, message says read only file
I
just purchased Turbotax 2025 premier for Mac (MacOs Tahoe 26.1) & received the software activation key from Costco. I downloaded the .dmg file and moved it to my applications folder but when I try to open Turbotax from applications as the instructions state, I get a message that says" TurboTax is on a read-only volume.
TurboTax can't be updated when it's running from a read-only volume like a disk image or an optical drive. Move TurboTax to your Applications folder and relaunch it from there". I have used Turbotax since 2015 on my various Macbooks but this is the first time I'm getting a message like this. I have reinstalled it 3 times and also rebooted my Mac multiple times. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
posted
yesterday
last updated November 12, 2025 7:57 PM
1
175
Opus 17
Level 15
After you copy the program from the disk image to the applications folder on your hard drive, you have to drag the image (virtual disk) into the trash to unmount it. The Mac is seeing 2 copies of the program (one on your hard drive and one on the virtual drive) and is trying to open the wrong copy.
4 hours ago
