Create a bootable Windows 11 USB on macOS — including for PCs Microsoft says are unsupported.
No Rufus, no Boot Camp, no Terminal knowledge needed. Double-click, pick your ISO, pick your USB stick, done.
Paste this into Terminal (Applications → Utilities → Terminal):
curl -fsSLo ~/Downloads/Win11USB.command https://raw.githubusercontent.com/byMUGU/win11usb-mac/main/Win11USB.command && chmod +x ~/Downloads/Win11USB.command && open ~/Downloads/Win11USB.commandThat downloads it, makes it runnable, and opens it. Next time, just double-click Win11USB.command in your Downloads folder.
Prefer to download it manually?
- Download
Win11USB.commandfrom the latest release - In Terminal, run:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/Win11USB.command xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/Win11USB.command
- Double-click it
Browsers strip the "allowed to run" permission and macOS marks the file as coming from an unknown developer. The two commands above fix both.
- Native Finder dialogs for choosing the ISO and the USB drive
- Handles the 4 GB FAT32 limit by splitting
install.wiminto parts that Windows Setup reads natively - Installs its own dependencies (Homebrew and wimlib) only if your ISO actually needs them
- Refuses to touch internal drives — only external disks are ever listed or erased
- Optional: install on unsupported PCs — skips the TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, RAM, storage and CPU checks
- Optional: local account — creates your Windows account up front, so setup never asks you to sign in with Microsoft
- A Mac running macOS
- A Windows 11 ISO — free from Microsoft
- A USB stick, 8 GB or larger. Everything on it will be erased.
- A valid Windows licence. This tool doesn't change anything about activation.
PCs boot from USB drives formatted as FAT32, a filesystem from 1996 that can't hold any single file larger than 4 GB. Current Windows 11 ISOs contain an install.wim of around 5–6 GB, so it can't simply be copied across.
The tool formats the stick as FAT32, copies everything except that file, then uses wimlib to split it into install.swm, install2.swm and so on. Split images are a standard Windows deployment feature — Setup reassembles them automatically.
If you enable the options, it also writes an autounattend.xml to the stick:
- Hardware bypass sets Microsoft's own
LabConfigregistry values during setup. It's the same mechanism Rufus uses. - Local account defines your user in the
oobeSystempass of the unattend file, so the Microsoft account screens are skipped entirely.
You can open autounattend.xml on the finished stick and read exactly what it does.
- Windows 11 24H2 and newer need a CPU with POPCNT and SSE4.2. The kernel itself uses these instructions, so no registry setting can work around it. Processors older than roughly 2009 will not boot at all.
- Some PCs still need Secure Boot disabled in BIOS, even with the bypass.
- Microsoft doesn't guarantee updates on unsupported hardware. In practice security updates have continued to arrive, but feature updates sometimes don't.
- The local account password is stored in plain text in
autounattend.xmlon the USB. Delete that file after installing, or change the password once you're in Windows.
"could not be executed because you do not have appropriate access privileges"
The file lost its run permission during download. Run chmod +x ~/Downloads/Win11USB.command.
"cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" Right-click the file → Open → Open. You only need to do this once.
Nothing appears when I type my password That's normal in Terminal. Type it and press Enter.
The PC shows "No boot device found" Pick the UEFI entry for your USB in the boot menu (usually F12, F9 or Esc at power-on), not the Legacy one.
Found a bug? Open an issue — include your macOS version and which step failed.
This is free and always will be. If it saved you some time, you can buy me a coffee.
Made by BYMUGU — there's a video walking through the whole process.
MIT — see LICENSE.