How to prepare a bootable OSMC image on macOS Catalina and Big Sur

Overview

With the release of macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple introduced security changes that are not compatible with the official OSMC installer. As a result, users on macOS Catalina and Big Sur wanting to prepare a bootable OSMC image, cannot use the official OSMC installer and need to follow these steps instead.

While these steps describe preparing a bootable OSMC image on an SD card for Raspberry Pi, they may work for preparing bootable SD cards and USB flash drives for other OSMC supported devices as well.

Steps

  • Go to the Download page and download the desired OSMC Disk Image (bottom of the page).
  • Download any SD card flashing app (tested with Etcher).
  • Launch the SD card flashing app and insert the SD card into your Mac.
  • In the flashing app, select the downloaded OSMC Disk image file as well as the desired target SD card. Flash the SD card.
  • Once flashed remove the SD card from your Mac.
  • With your Raspberry Pi powered off, insert the flashed SD card and power on the Raspberry Pi.
  • That’s it - you will now see the OSMC installation on your screen!
1 Like

Good writeup for the Mac users here👌🏻