How to create a bootable macOS Big Sur USB Install drive 

Your drive should be at least 16GB, not 8GB.

This was the first video I found that ACTUALLY gave sufficient instruction for me to create the bootable USB drive. Thank you so much!😁

One of my Macs ( mini running Bigsur) died on me the other day with it not being able to boot. It's a 2012 unit so I was quickly able to identify it was a hard disc issue. I looked at other videos on RU-vid but they were all vague about some points. Following your video I've been able to install a new installation of Bigsur running on a new partition and recovered all my data using time machine. Excellent video and I've now subscribed 👍

Excellent tutorial. Your shortcuts for Terminal were mind-blowing, didn't know you could drag and drop scripts, it saved my life because I was struggling with the "Terminal command not found" message and couldn't find a way around it.

I already knew the method, I needed to refresh my memory, what I liked a lot and did not know is that if I drag an element to the Terminal it will put the full path of that element, excellent!

One of the clearest macOS installers ever. Thanks

Spent 2 hours trying to do this last night, today I managed to do it with 5mins of your video tyvm

I was literally thinking about install big sur like an hour ago, and you uploaded it...thanks

Very well explained. I couldn't wrap my head around having too boot up from the Thumb Drive, until I watched your video. Thanks

Such an amazing and helpful video! In case anyone's curious, I did this for a late 2014 Mac Mini, and the copy time was nearly an hour. The manual part of the process was super quick, though

"Press space on the space bar to create a space." I was stuck on this part for so long. Thank you for the tip!

man! I have been trying to find a clear explanation of how to install Big Sur in an old machine to no avail even with apple support. your video is clear and to the point.great! thank you.

For people without t2 skip the command r part and begin where he clicks the power button and holds down option to skip internet recovery, great vid

Best ever instructions on creating bootable disks I've ever seen.

Great way to teaching with drag and drop shortcuts in terminal.

I saved this video for today, can’t wait to install Big Sur on my Mac!

If you’ve got an older mac with an older system and it’s not working in Terminal. Try downloading the latest version of that OS and following these instructions again. It worked for me. Thanks for the video.

You are the only one in video content who helped me to fix my laptop. BIG THANKS 🎉

best version of this process I've seen. so much better than downloading software to do the same thing you showed in simple drag and drop. awesome!

It's one of the best tutorial video for Mac, now I can do it and I don't have to pay for tech support.👌you save me a lot of money dude 💪

Thanks a lot Jeff, you have solved my 3 - day Mac issue. Keep up the good work of making such awesome tutorials.

Best video I have seen! Shortcuts to the terminal were amazing! everything worked as described. Please keep up the great detail in your videos. Thank you!

thank you thank you thank you for this, as I only like to use terminal to create a bootable macOS drive. I've been using your terminal method now for a few previous macOS installations in the past.

As you said, it all went through pretty seamlessly but there was one difference, my startup security utility did not offer the same menu so I could not change the two security options like you did, probably because this is only a late 2013 Mac. Thanks for your perfect instructional video, very appreciated 🙏

11-12-20 Thank you Jeff, I am following your video and installing macOS Big Sur on my 2019 4K iMac. I am very excited and grateful for your easy to follow video. I did not need to enable security as my 2019 iMac does not have a T2 chip. I was able to simply hit option key to boot from the external USB installer and I did not have to hold command r to get into recovery mode to allow external booting. I choose to do a clean install and erase my internal Macintosh SSD blank. As I prefer a fresh install on all my Macs when a new macOS releases.

Thank you so much!!! You were the only one who made me understand how it was done. You were very detailed and clear in explaining. I subscribed to the channel and activated all notifications.

Best One Ive seen. Been trying to get this to work for a couple of days and kept running into problems! Very easy to do! Great Vid.

from 2023 thank you, accidently partitioned my boot drive and even with recovery menu I couldn't get a fresh install. Thanks again

Thank You!! I completely erased everything and was having constant errors when trying to download the software through the recovery mode (or whatever the right name is) This worked perfectly!! I'm Hoping that I can just format the flash drive and go back to using it as normal after.

Thanks a lot, this detailed instructions helped me to recover my old dead mackbook air, From nothing (i mean nothing black screen nothing) To High Sierra, after it was hacked and i lost all. Now i can try to upgrade next !!😁

Man I looked high & low & I think this gone do it appreciate ya

finally I got it, and this is the first bootable disk I create for my Mac and hopefully the installation is easy like your tutorial, Thank U Jeff

You're a lifesaver. I hit tons of problems with other tutorials and this got the job done. THANK YOU

Thank you so much , The internet install keeps failing so this allowed me to install Big Sur . !! Kudos my friend :)

Best guide to creating bootable USB installer.

FAB-ulous video! Very detailed and very helpful. Thank you for making this task so simple and straight-forward.

Thankyou so much for this video. I'm preparing my old macbook pro to be sold and this video got me out of a real pickle.

This video was so well made that it art, not a tutorial.

Thank you for a simple drag and drop method for dropping in file paths into terminal, worked like a charm compared to other methods

Thank you I was looking for this tutorial on how to downgrade my old Mac from sonna to Ventura t 😂 your video actually explained everything tqsm man 🤝

Just wanted to say a massive thank you for this tutorial, its spot on THANKS AGAIN your a Star

love how simplistic you make it. The Mac tutorial on their site made it confusing.

This was extremely helpful and sincerely appreciated. Thank you so much for this gem!

Thank you for showing this updated and step by step instructions

Many thanks Jeff, I looked at a number of these videos but yours was the best and so easy to follow...😊

Thank you this helped me a lot in reinstalling the OS on an older iMac

Loud and clear. Very good. Thanks a lot!

Thank you so much for this! My IMAC will have new life because of you.

Best video take me couple of times ,but I was successful, thank you !

EXCELLENT video.....steps were clear and easy to follow....I had to redo the terminal commands and download the App Store version but even with that was a quick install.....thanks!

Woah, is that Jeff from idownloadblog? Didn't realize he was still making videos

You boot the USB on the new Macbook M1 by pressing and holding power button till the start up screen appears :)

Thank you! Straight-forward, & easy.

great video, and everything is going great but I'm at the "Copying to disk: 0%...." and it hasn't moved a half hour later still at 0% is it suppose to be this long? Will it tell me if there is a problem?

Thanks.. that was an "impossible task", made "a lot less hard", but still, many will be unable to do this.Just IMAGINE, if Apple just had a ready made image for their over-loyal users to download.. That'll be right swell! Thnx again,.. Probably the best USB Installer vid here!

Thank you, I have been trying to install Big Sur Beta in my new 2020 iMac and I was not successful at all, but with this video I understand what I have been doing wrong. My T2 chip was not allowing me to install to another volume! thanks for the video!

Thank you. It worked like a charm for using a new disk. I was being lazy using Carbon Copy Cleaner to clone but it didn't work this time.

Hi all I get stuck at the copying to disk stage of making the flashdrive bootable. It erases the drive and then doesn't progress further than 0% for the copying to disk portion. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks for this tutorial, Jeff. It was very helpful. I have older MacBook then yours; it is without T2 chip so I do not have the Security Utility options. But the rest went the same. Best regards 👋

Damn man! Finally due to your video, i was able to downgrade from Monterey to mojave❤️. Many thanks

Best video on this process I’ve seen yet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! Blessings, keep them coming!

Very clear and direct, thanks Jeff

Does it erase ur data that u have on Macintosh HD Data ?

Thanks a lot. Nice, clear and warm voice and instructions.

Thank you very much for the detailed tutorial! Very clear, very easy to explain. I copied everything and it works! Sorry, I still have to install it on my 27 "iMac from 2012. But I'm hopeful. Thank you very much. Greetings from Germany :-)

I upgraded to Monterey from Big Sur on my Intel Mac and that messed up my system by making it extremely sluggish and the battery drainage rates also increased significantly. On further lookup, discovered it was a BIG mistake as Monterey is primarily optimised for the Apple silicon Macs and tonnes of issues and bugs have been reported on Intel Macs which have been upgraded to Monterey. So I want to DOWNGRADE from Monterey to back to Big Sur on my Intel Mac (as my Intel MacBook was BLAZING FAST with Big Sur) - by using a procedure similar to what you have illustrated using external bootable USB installer for Big Sur followed by re-erase/re-format of the internal disk on my Intel Mac. Few questions related to this : 1) What was the size of the macOS BigSur installer downloaded or what is the MINIMUM size of USB required to copy the installer on it and make it bootable - currently I have a 8GB USB? 2) I Understand that you mentioned to format the USB only as "MacOS Extended Journalled" and NOT as APFS to make it bootable - What is the reason for what and why APFS cannot be used as format for external bootable media? 3) I also understand one would have to backup all user specific data on a portable hard drive to restore it back post downgrade as well as reinstall any third party applications like Office365 etc. back post downgrade as well as reconfigure any lost settings like network settings, Wifi, printer etc. and the same should be done and backed up prior to erasing the Mactintosh HD APFS volume group? Pls confirm IF my understanding is correct.

Really simple with your instructions! Simply genius!

Thanks for the video, it helped me a lot doing clean install of big sur to my mac. 😊👍

Thank you Jeff!! You are a great teacher! Easy to follow instructions.

Great video. I keep getting an error “install macOS Big Sur.app does not appear to be a valid OS installer application”... not sure what I am doing wrong?

you are excellent in explaning , appreciated God bless you

Thanks for the help. Followed you step by step and worked it perfectly!

Worked as a charm, thank you 🖖

2022 works well, very well explained. Thanks

I found that the settings (5:38) are a bit different for the older model iMacs (like the ones originally installed with Mavericks) but I just poked around and figured it out. Thanks for the video. I would have been stuck on this for hours without it.

nice video bro

Awesome video thank you for making it so clear and easy to follow!

Very neat video and easy to follow! Thank you much for this.

Maaaaann, You are the best. Although I have not yet gone thru the entire process of installing from the created bootabe drive, your video is the bestone i have come across. You helped BIG TIME thumbs up.

thank you so much, work for me macbook pro 2014.

Jeff, thanks for your video. It looks simple and easy. Will tryout

Many thanks 🤗 wish all videos where so easy ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to understand 😎

Great explanation ... you made my day!!!

So helpful, thanks for posting on how to do this!

Thanks for this video, it helped me out today. Keep up the good work.

Clean and to the point explaination.

In an older Mac ( one with a removable ssd ) could you download the installer straight to the new ssd and just boot from there ? Or the usb drive is still necessary ? Btw, absolutely fantastic video, just perfect thanks a lot.

Awesome very good explained! Thanks bro

Thank you Jeff, this Video is awesome.

Thank You So Much! I was at my wits end

Excellent video, nice and simple. Thank you. Greetings from Mexico.

Do we need to alter the security settings back to what they were before? You didn’t mention anything about that.

Is the altering of the secure boot done before you put a new SSD in or before? When I try to alter secure boot I'm stuck in a password loop for the firmware.

I can't get the "Startup Security Utility" to come up fully. I only get the top part to set password, but not where I can check *Medium Security, and *Allow Booting From External Media". Any idea how I can get this to come up fully?

You really helped me bro. Thanks a lot

Great work, Many Thanks bro (this tutorial works also for Monterey)

When I boot from the USB there comes something about selecting a starvolume :(

This was a sanity-saver - thanks!!!

Thanks you bro, really helped me.

This is sooooooooooooo amazing. It worked perfectly. Thanks so much.