Create Bootable Usb Mac Os Catalina

How to create a bootable installer using Terminal. Plug the USB stick, hard drive or SSD into your Mac. Go to ApplicationsUtilities and double-click Disk Utility to launch it. Select the disk you want to use for the installer and choose the Erase tab. A bootable version of the macOS Catalina installer is one of the often-overlooked tools a Mac user should have on hand before upgrading to or performing a clean install of Catalina. The bootable installer you create in this guide will be housed on a USB flash drive, but you can use any bootable device you may have lying around, including.

Apple hasn’t shipped operating systems on physical media in a full decade, but there are still good reasons to want a reliable old USB stick for macOS Catalina. Luckily, it's not hard to make one—either with a handy graphical user interface or some light Terminal use. Here's what you need to get started:

  • A Mac that you have administrator access to. We've created a USB stick from both Mojave and Catalina, but your experience with other versions may vary.
  • A 16GB or larger USB flash drive or a 16GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. A USB 3.0 drive will make things significantly faster, but an older USB 2.0 drive will work in a pinch; 8GB drives worked for Mojave and older versions of macOS, but the Catalina installer is just a little too large to fit.
  • The macOS 10.15 Catalina installer from the Mac App Store (in High Sierra or older macOS versions) or the Software Update preference pane in Mojave. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
  • If you want a GUI, take a look at Ben Slaney's Install Disk Creator from MacDaddy. There are other apps out there that do this, but this one is quick and simple.

If you want to use this USB installer with newer Macs as they are released, you'll want to periodically re-download new Catalina installers and make new install drives. Apple rolls support for newer hardware into new macOS point releases as they come out, so this will help keep your install drive as universal and versatile as possible.

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Create Bootable Usb Mac Catalina From Windows

There's also one new consideration for newer Macs with Apple's T2 controller chip—as of this writing, that list includes the iMac Pro, the 2018 Mac Mini, the 2018 MacBook Air, and 2018 and 2019 MacBook Pros, though Apple keeps an updated list here. Among this chip's many security features is one that disallows booting from external drives by default. To re-enable this feature, hold down Command-R while your Mac reboots to go into Recovery Mode and use the Startup Security Utility to 'allow booting from external media.' If you're trying to install an older version of macOS, you may also need to go from Full Security to Medium Security to enable booting, but if you're just trying to install the current version of macOS, the Full Security option should be just fine. And if you're just doing an upgrade install rather than a clean install, you can run the Catalina installer from the USB drive from within your current installation of macOS, no advanced tweaking required.

Create Bootable Usb Mac Os Catalina

The easy way

Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and launch the Install Disk Creator. This app is basically just a GUI wrapper for the terminal command, so it should be possible to make install disks for versions of macOS going all the way back to Lion. In any case, it will work just fine for our purposes.

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Install Disk Creator will automatically detect macOS installers on your drive and suggest one for you, displaying its icon along with its path. You can navigate to a different installer if you want, and you can also pick from all the storage devices and volumes currently connected to your Mac through the drop-down menu at the top of the window. Once you're ready to go, click 'Create Installer' and wait. A progress bar across the bottom of the app will tell you how far you have to go, and a pop-up notification will let you know when the process is done. This should only take a few minutes on a USB 3.0 flash drive in a modern Mac, though using USB 2.0 will slow things down.

The only slightly less-easy way

The Install Disk Creator is just a wrapper for the terminal command to create macOS install disks, so if you’re comfortable formatting your USB drive yourself and opening a Terminal window, it’s almost as easy to do it this way. Assuming that you have the macOS Catalina installer in your Applications folder and you have a Mac OS Extended (Journaled)-formatted USB drive (which is to say, HFS+ and notAPFS) named 'Untitled' mounted on the system, you can create a Catalina install drive using the following command.

sudo /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

Create

The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the macOS installer but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection. If you would like to create an install drive for a macOS version other than Catalina, just tweak the paths above to refer to Mojave or High Sierra instead.

Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade Catalina as you normally would. You can also use Safari, Disk Utility, or Time Machine from the recovery partition to restore backups or troubleshoot.

These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.

Bootable

What you need to create a bootable installer

  • A USB flash drive or other secondary volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, with at least 14GB of available storage
  • A downloaded installer for macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, or El Capitan

Download macOS

  • Download: macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, or macOS High Sierra
    These download to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS [version name]. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
  • Download: OS X El Capitan
    This downloads as a disk image named InstallMacOSX.dmg. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.

Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

How To Create Bootable Usb Mac Os Catalina

  1. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer.
  2. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  3. Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these commands with the name of your volume.

Big Sur:*

Catalina:*

Mojave:*

High Sierra:*

El Capitan:

* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath argument and installer path, similar to the way this is done in the command for El Capitan.


After typing the command:

  1. Press Return to enter the command.
  2. When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
  3. When prompted, type Y to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the volume is erased.
  4. After the volume is erased, you may see an alert that Terminal would like to access files on a removable volume. Click OK to allow the copy to proceed.
  5. When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Big Sur. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.

Use the bootable installer

Determine whether you're using a Mac with Apple silicon, then follow the appropriate steps:

Create Bootable Usb Mac Os Catalina

Apple silicon

Create Bootable Usb Mac Os Catalina Update

  1. Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing.
  2. Turn on your Mac and continue to hold the power button until you see the startup options window, which shows your bootable volumes.
  3. Select the volume containing the bootable installer, then click Continue.
  4. When the macOS installer opens, follow the onscreen instructions.

Intel processor

  1. Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing.
  2. Press and hold the Option (Alt) ⌥ key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.
  3. Release the Option key when you see a dark screen showing your bootable volumes.
  4. Select the volume containing the bootable installer. Then click the up arrow or press Return.
    If you can't start up from the bootable installer, make sure that the External Boot setting in Startup Security Utility is set to allow booting from external media.
  5. Choose your language, if prompted.
  6. Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.

Learn more

A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the internet, but it does require an internet connection to get firmware and other information specific to the Mac model.

For information about the createinstallmedia command and the arguments you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter the appropriate path in Terminal: