You might be interested to install macOS Sierra on your Mac to enjoy some new features introduced in macOS Sierra 10.12. In this guide you will learn to create a bootable USB drive or any portable USB drive to install macOS. This bootable drive will help you to fresh or clean install macOS or dual boot on Macbook, iMac, Mac mini or computer that compatible to install this operating system. Do you want to know features included in this new macOS? Feature you might be interested in, ask Siri to do something while you working on other stuff, Siri can locate your files, play music, check weather condition and much more. Please check our previous post to know more about new feature of macOS Sierra. about Photos app , Apple Pay, Auto unlock with Watch, Universal Clipboard and much more.
Requirements
There are few requirements to create bootable USB for macOS Sierra beta.
- Before following all these steps check the compatibility, so you don’t waste time. See this post to fine Is macOS Sierra 10.12 compatible with you Mac?
- You need to download macOS Sierra 10.12 installer file from Mac App Store or from Apple Developer Center.
- 16GB or greater size USB thumb drive or portable USB drive that doesn’t contain any important data, because we need to format this drive and everything available on this drive will be deleted. If you don’t have 16GB USB I would suggest you to but from Amazon, its cheap.
Make macOS Sierra Install Drive
Once you have downloaded macOS Sierra application from App Store. Don’t run the installer that may ask you to install macOS 10.12, just close the installer or leave it on the side. If you accedently ran the installer, this will remove the downloaded installer from applications and you need to download macOS 10.12 installer again.
Make sure installer app is available in Applications section with the name Install 10.12 Developer Preview.app
Plug your USB drive with Mac and change the name of drive to InstallSierra, remember this name will be used in our next steps while creating USB Installer.
Now, open Terminal app from Mac Application > Utilities section.
Type or just copy and paste the following command in the Terminal window and hit return. You might be asked to enter admin password to execute create install media command successfully. Also re-check the command text you typed correctly.
sudo /Applications/Install\ 10.12\ Developer\ Preview.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/InstallSierra --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ 10.12\ Developer\ Preview.app --nointeraction
Terminal will show some message like Erasing Disk… coping installer files… making disk bootable… etc. wait for it to complete the disk creation steps and after a while you will have a macOS Sierra bootable USB drive.
Now, you can use this disk to clean install macOS Sierra 10.12 on your mac or even create dual boot that will keep you old Mac OS X and you can switch between.