Updated Etcher Free Download

Here at balena we have thousands of users working through our getting started process and until recently we were embarassed about the steps that involved flashing an SD card. There was a separate track for each Mac/Windows/Linux and several manual and error-prone steps along the way.

To our surprise there was nothing out there that fit our needs. So we built Etcher, an SD card flasher app that is simple for end users, extensible for developers, and works on any platform.

Bootable USB drives are a great way to try out a new Linux distribution to see if you like it before you install it.

There's always the option to use dd to create media on the command line—but let's face it, even for the most experienced user, that's still a pain. There are other utilities—like UnetBootIn, Disk Utility on macOS, and Win32DiskImager on Windows—that create bootable USBs.

Go to the Etcher Download website and click on the download link for your operating system—32- or 64-bit Linux, 32- or 64-bit Windows, or macOS.

Etcher provides great instructions in its GitHub repository for adding Etcher to your collection of Linux utilities.

In addition to creating bootable images for Ubuntu, EndlessOS, and other flavors of Linux, I have used Etcher to create SD card images for the Raspberry Pi. Here's how to create bootable media.

Click on Select Image. In this example, I want to create a bootable USB drive to install Ubermix on a new computer. Once I have selected my Ubermix image file and inserted my USB drive into the computer, Etcher.io "sees" the drive, and I can begin the process of installing Ubermix on my USB.

Once I click on Flash, the installation process begins. The time required depends on the image's size. After the image is installed on the drive, the software verifies the installation; at the end, a banner announces my media creation is complete.

If you need help with Etcher, contact the community through its Discourse forum. Etcher is very easy to use, and it has replaced all my other media creation tools because none of them do the job as easily or as well as Etcher.