How to create a macOS bootable installer in Windows?
Jul 13, 2025 am 01:10 AMMaking a macOS bootable installer on Windows is not officially supported, but can be implemented through third-party tools. First, prepare a USB drive above 16GB, macOS installation image (.dmg/.iso) and tools such as TransMac or balenaEtcher; secondly, use TransMac to right-click the USB drive and select "Restore with Disk Image" to write the image, or use balenaEtcher to select ISO files and target disk to write; finally note that the USB drive must be in GPT format, and install Hackintosh, you also need to manually configure EFI boot and use boot tools to bypass restrictions.
Creating a macOS bootable installer (Bootable Installer) is not directly supported on Windows, because Apple's official tools such as the "macOS Installation Assistant" only run on macOS systems. But if you really need to make a macOS boot disk on a Windows computer, for example, in order to install Hackintosh, you can still achieve it through some workarounds.

Here are some common and feasible practices:

Prepare the tools and files you need
To start making a macOS boot disk, you need to prepare the following things:
- A USB drive of at least 16GB (high-speed USB drive is recommended to increase writing speed)
- A Windows computer
- macOS installation image (usually a .dmg or .iso file, or an installation package extracted by .pkg)
- A tool that can operate on Windows, for example:
- TransMac (paid but simple)
- balenaEtcher (free, suitable for writing to mirrors)
- Or command line tools such as
dd
(via WSL)
Note: The downloaded macOS image must be ensured to be reliable, otherwise it may contain malware or will not boot properly.

Use TransMac to create a macOS boot disk
This is one of the most convenient ways to do on Windows right now. TransMac supports writing .dmg or .iso files of macOS directly to USB flash drives and automatically set to bootable format.
The steps are as follows:
- Insert the USB flash drive and back up the data in it (which will be formatted)
- Open TransMac, right-click your USB drive, and select “Restore with Disk Image”
- Find your prepared macOS installation image (.dmg or .iso file)
- Wait for the write to be completed, this process may take 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the USB speed
Once completed, your USB drive becomes a macOS boot disk that can be used to install Hackintosh.
Write to ISO images using balenaEtcher
If you get the ISO image file of macOS, you can use balenaEtcher to write it:
- Download and install balenaEtcher
- Open the program, click "Flash from file" and select your macOS ISO file
- Select the target USB drive
- Click "Flash!" to start writing
This method is suitable for situations where ISO has been extracted, but not all macOS ISOs can be used directly for startup, and some require additional bootloaders.
Additional Notes
Although the above method can help you make a macOS boot disk on Windows, there are several details that are easily overlooked:
- The USB drive must be formatted as a GUID Partition Table (GPT) to be correctly recognized by macOS. This step is usually done automatically by the tool, but in some cases it needs to be manually set.
- If you are using Hackintosh to install, in addition to the boot disk itself, you also need to add the correct EFI boot configuration. This part usually requires manual editing of the contents of the EFI partition
- The macOS installer won't be allowed to run on non-Apple hardware by default, so you may also need to patch or use the Clover/OpenCore boot tool to bypass the restrictions
Basically that's it. Although you cannot create a macOS boot disk natively like on macOS, this can also be done on Windows with the help of third-party tools. As long as the mirror is fine and the tools are used correctly, the success rate is still very high.
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