How To Create A macOS 26 Tahoe USB Installation Drive

#macos #tutorial #productivity #devops

Hi there. In this article, I'll be going over the process of how you can create a macOS 26 Tahoe USB bootable installation drive.

YouTube Video

If you would prefer to see a video of this article, there is a video version available on YouTube below:

Requirements

To do this, you'll need macOS 10.15 or above (I used macOS 15) and a 32GB USB stick or higher to create the installation drive.

Before you start, make sure to backup any data that is on the USB stick as the USB stick will be erased as part of the process.

Downloading the macOS 26 Tahoe Installer

Unlike previous versions of macOS, macOS 26 Tahoe is not available in the App store. It can only be downloaded via the command line for the full version that is used to create an installation disk.

To begin with, you'll need to open the terminal application. To this, use spotlight by pressing command and space together. Then, type terminal and hover over to the terminal application. It looks like a black box with a white arrow. Left click on it to open the application.

Your terminal may look different to mine but don't worry.

You can also get to it by opening a Finder window, going to Applications, then Utilities and then double clicking on Terminal.

First, you need to determine what the latest version of Tahoe is. There are two ways to do this. First, you can use this webpage, which shows it is being 26.1 at the time of writing this article.

The second method is to run the following command in the terminal:

softwareupdate --list-full-installers

The latest version is at the top, which again is 26.1.

The next step is to download the installer for macOS 26.1. To do that, run the following command. If a newer version is available, replace 26.1 with that version, if you want to:

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 26.1

It will now download the installer. This will take some time.

Creating the USB Installation Drive

Now that the installer has finished downloading, you should be able to see it in the Applications folder in Finder.

The next step is to make the USB installation drive. First, make sure your USB stick is connected to your Mac.

Mine is connected and it's called usbstick.

I would recommend renaming your USB stick to a name that has no spaces to make it easier.

Once again, remember to backup anything that is on the USB stick that you want to keep.

When you are ready, run the following command in the terminal. Replace usbstick with the name of your USB stick.

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Tahoe.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/usbstick

Press enter and then type in your password, or the username and password for an administrator account if your account doesn't have that level of permission.

When it asks you to confirm the USB stick can be erased, press y and then enter.

Your USB stick will disappear from Finder and then come back with the name of Install macOS Tahoe. This is normal.

The progress will be shown on the screen.

Once it has completed, the terminal will look like the below image.