Apple use to bundle Java in all of its operating systems, but started excluding it after OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion due to a series of security vulnerabilities related to browsers that were discovered in Java 6. If you need to install Java SE 6 or newer on OS X 10.11 El Capitan, there’s a simple way to do so, but make sure only to install Java if you have absolutely have to.
Oracle, who became the caretakers of Java after acquiring Sun Microsystems in 2009, have been releasing updated versions of Java (Version 8.60 is the latest) but these newer versions of Java will not work with any programs that throw up an error on OS X El Capitan saying “This application requires the legacy Java SE 6 runtime which is unavailable for this version of OS X.”
Unless that error comes up, assume that you need the newer version of Java, which can be downloaded from Oracle here.
Java for OS X 2015-001 is Apple’s installer utility for installing a legacy Java 6 runtime on OS X. Apple’s Java installer works on OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and OS X 10.7 Lion.
OS X Daily recommends disabling rootless system integrity protection (SIP) before trying to install Java on OS X, otherwise the installation process could become frozen halfway through the verification. SIP is an extra layer of protection that Apple puts into OS X to ensure that system level files are protected from being accessed, while at the same time making sure rogue processes can’t hijack system processes.
You do not want to disable the rootless feature, SIP’s other name, unless you absolutely have to. But if your Java installation is not working and it’s critical, SIP is probably at fault. You can see why Apple has stopped bundling OS X with Java: It’s a black hole of security.
In case you were wondering, JRE is short for Java Runtime Environment while JDK is the Java Developmental Kit. Unless you are creating something, you will probably only need to install the JRE version of Java.







