Utility means application means requirement for the underlying OS that the application was designed to run on (in this case Windows). Please don't ignore the "Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives" part to try to fit your narrative. That last part does exists, but is limited to UEFI boot applications and will only work if you boot that drive on an UEFI system. You are confusing an application such as Rufus that can install a bootloader (plus a minimal OS and the set of applications that go with it, depending on the options you select), and that needs to run on a specific Operating System, such as Windows, with something that can simply be copied over to a flash drive, no matter the OS you use, and will magically boot a blank system. A DOS BIOS flashing utility is an application that runs under the DOS Operating System (which is actually a redundancy since 'OS' in DOS stands for 'Operating System'), a Windows installer is an application that runs under the minimal Windows execution environment that the boot loader loads on Windows installation media, and UNetbootin is an application that (depending on your download) runs under the Linux OS or the Windows OS. It’s a good idea to keep the USB drive in a safe place somewhere as it can be used again to reinstall Windows on your Mac if you have any problems with the installation or install Windows on another Mac.Except for boot loaders, every application requires an OS to run, and Rufus is no exception. You can now continue installing Windows for free on your Mac by restarting it and selecting the USB drive as your Boot Disk. You have now successfully created a bootable USB drive using Etcher on your Mac. You may see a message in macOS saying “The disk inserted was unreadable by macOS” but this is nothing to worry about and you can ignore it.Make sure that there are no errors reported. Once the process is complete, Etcher will display a “Flash Complete!” message.This process may take some time, depending on the size of the ISO file and the speed of your USB drive so don’t be alarmed if the progress is stuck on 0% for some time. Etcher will then start writing the ISO image to the USB drive.Etcher may prompt you to enter your administrator password at this point at which you should do so and click “OK”.Click on the “Flash!” button to begin the flashing process.Then click on the “Flash to” button and choose the target USB drive. Browse to the ISO Image by clicking on the “Flash from file” button and select the location where you saved the downloaded ISO image (such as in your Mac’s “Downloads” folder).Launch Etcher on your Mac which will be in your Applications folder.A Windows 11 ISO is about 5GB so you’ll need at least that much space on your USB drive to install Windows 11. Make sure it has enough storage capacity to store the ISO image.If it is not recognized by your Mac, you’ll need to format it first.
In the case of Windows 11, it would be the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft.
Download the ISO image of the operating system you want to install.Simply follow these instructions to create a bootable USB drive using Etcher on your Mac: Popular Boot installer creation tools such as Rufus don’t exist for Mac but Etcher does the job just as well.Įtcher is a free open source, user-friendly tool that allows you to write disk images to USB drives or SD cards in minutes. If you need to create a bootable USB drive on your Mac but aren’t sure where to start, here we show you how to easily create one for free with Etcher.Ĭreating a bootable USB drive can be useful in a variety of different situations such as to install Windows for free on a Mac or downgrade macOS to an older version.