Hands-On Tech 224 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. Let's take a look at creating a bootable installer. No, not for Windows, but for macOS. Stay tuned.

Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. This, of course, is the show where I, Mikah Sargent, take your tech questions and answer them. Yes, that is what we do. We go hands-on with tech by answering your tech questions. You write in H-O-T@twit.tv that stands for Hands-On Tech, and when you do, I read through, I do some research and I get an answer for you.

This week's question comes in from Rick, who asks a simple question but who will come to realize that it's a little bit complicated to go through the process. Rick asks since we can't do things like buying macOS on a CD-ROM, how can we make a clean installer of macOS? Fantastic question, and it's a question that Apple has thoroughly documented. But what's funny is I often find myself having to go back to the documentation to remember myself how to create a bootable installer for macOS, because Apple sort of does its best to encourage you away from it. So I guess that's discourages you from using a bootable installer. In fact, the first thing that you see, or the first sort of subhead that you see on the support page talking about creating a bootable installer. Do you need a bootable installer?

Apple says you don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, and that is the case. It's very true because of the way that macOS is set up. At the base level, there's a sort of recovery, a built-in recovery partition that exists, that has the base system, so that you are able to reinstall or reformat, refresh macOS without needing to have a bootable installer. And even in cases where that base system gets corrupted, there's even more of an option to download a new version of macOS from the internet if you have access to the internet. And so I sort of laugh at the idea that Apple is very much about the idea of not using a bootable installer, because many of you nerds out there, I know, love your bootable installers, and I do too. I think it's important to always have that option so that, if you need to, you're able to reinstall a fresh version of macOS without needing to access the internet. Or what if there's something going on with the built-in networking on the system? Well, suddenly you can't access the internet. So creating a bootable installer is a good idea.

Now, the way to do so is by first getting a USB flash drive or an SSD, or you could even, within the hardware itself, create a little secondary volume that would have this startup disk built in. But regardless of where and how and what, the first thing to do is to download the full macOS installer. Now this again is a tricky bit of the process, because Apple doesn't make it simple and easy for you to just go and download macOS from the internet. If you are a sysadmin or you have some of the sort of behind-the-scenes knowledge, there are a few terminal commands that will let you download macOS files installer, but the way that Apple puts it out there and puts it forward and doesn't obscure it, is to be able to download it from the App Store. So in order to download and install macOS, the first thing to do is to go to the right link. Now we'll include a link in the show notes to a page called how to Download and Install macOS, and on it you will see an option that says Use the App Store. So if you scroll down to that Use the App Store section, you'll find the version of macOS that you want to install. Let's say it's Sonoma, and so you click on that and what will happen is it's going to ask if you want to open the App Store. When you do, it'll open the App Store. It will take you to the page for macOS In this case, I think, we chose Sonoma and you will have an option to click Get. You'll click the Get button and it's going to start downloading the installer. Now here's the important part. And it's going to start downloading the installer.

Now here's the important part. When it finishes installing, or rather downloading, it's going to automatically open that installer. Do not go through the process, do not click next and go through the process of installing, because if you do, that installer is going to magically disappear from the applications folder. Very annoying that that happens, but it does so close out of it. Don't pay attention to it, ignore it. Make it go away, because otherwise it itself will remove from the applications folder and you need that installer, will remove from the applications folder and you need that installer. So, once you have downloaded it, you're going to make sure that you have the DMG file on your local machine, which DMG just means disk image and then, by default, again, it should be in that applications folder. So you launch Finder, you click on applications. One other note we're talking about the system level applications, not the user applications, because your user also has an applications folder. It's not in there, it's in the main applications folder. It's not in there, it's in the main applications folder.

Then our next step is to connect an SSD or a flash drive, whatever you want to do, and pop that in and make sure that it has. For modern macOS needs to be 32 gigabytes. For older versions of macOS only needs to be 16 gigabytes. But Apple does not specify where that cutoff is. So my suggestion is make sure you have a 32 gigabyte or bigger flash drive. Then you're good to go. What you'll want to do, what you'll want to do and this is part of kind of how much knowledge you have In Apple Steps, apple recommends renaming the flash drive to my Volume with the M capitalized and the V capitalized, because when you do it will make it easier when you're going through the next steps of the process.

Now it's not necessary if you know what you're doing, because you will just properly fill in the text that you need to fill in, because the next step is to open terminal. And again, this is where things can get a little tricky if you're not sure how to go about this. But Apple does provide every version of macOS, the code that you type in the text, that you type in the string that you type in, from Sequoia all the way back to El Capitan, and what you're doing is you are essentially creating this bootable installer on your flash drive. That is what the process does. So here is, if we can show that the support page not the second one that says how to download, but the one that says create a bootable installer let's scroll down to use terminal to create the bootable installer. You can see what we're doing here is. We are essentially doing a little.

We're opening a little script that's called create install media, which creates an installable version, and it tells it I want to put it on a volume, and the volume is called my volume. If you have a different name for your flash drive, you essentially just have to replace that thing at the end that says my volume with the name that you have for your, your flash drive, and then you're good to go. So it's going to go through the process. You've got to type in your administrator password, because it's done with Sudo, and then what's going to happen is you will get well, it depends. You might get a message that says hey, this is not working, you don't have a valid installer application. In that case you may need to open up Disk Utility and actually repair the startup disk. But again, it'll walk you through this whole process and there are some other potential issues that I'm not going to get into, but you can read here at the support guide.

Once you go through the process, it's going to kind of erase this drive and put the bootable version on, and when it's done it will say install media now available at, and it's going to change the name from my volume to install Mac OS, blah blah. So if you were doing Sonoma, it would say install macOS Sonoma and that will be the drive. Now, once you have the drive ready to go, once you have your bootable installer since you can't have it as a CD-ROM, it's very easy to make use of it. So let's talk about how you do. If you have a Mac that has Apple Silicon, you need to shut down your Mac, turn off your Mac, you plug in your bootable installer, then you press and hold the power button on your Mac until you get to the startup options page, which will show you your bootable options choices. That should be your hard drive and this flash drive. You select the bootable installer, you click continue and then it's going to open up the installer and let you move through that process. On Macs without Apple Silicon, you shut down, you connect it as you did before, you power it on and you hold down the option key. When you get to the page that has the bootable volumes, then you let go of the option key, you select it and then you go through the process. So that is the way to go about it on Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs. Very simple, very easy to do to go through this process of not just creating the bootable installer but making use of the bootable installer playing ball and you can't get things working by just going into recovery mode and working through that way. That is how you create a bootable clean installer of macOS. A really great question, rick, and I appreciate you writing in with it because again, it's something that comes up far enough in between that I always have to go back and remember. Okay, now it's, it's. I think it's a. Yeah, it's a script that's inside of the installer and I've got a, a used terminal to get to. It's a little complicated, but if you follow step-by-step to the boot, create a bootable installer for Mac OS guide, I think that you'll be a okay when it comes to this.

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I remind all of you out there, if you have questions for me, you can get in touch H-O-T@twit.tv. It's how you get in touch to ask your question. Thank you, rick, for writing in and I'll catch you all again next week for another episode of Hands on Tech. Bye-bye.

0:15:00 - Leo Laporte
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