balenaEtcher
A free, open-source tool for burning images to USB and SD cards. Compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. Features validated burning, avoiding accidental wipes, offers a sleek interface, is lightweight and portable, making it ideal for users at any skill level.
Features
Properties
- User friendly
- Lightweight
Features
- Create bootable USB
- Graphical User Interface
- Write ISO to SD card
- Portable
- Burn iso
- Create bootable Image
- Validated Burning
- Electron based
- Material design
- Persistent Storage
- Support for S.M.A.R.T. data
- Convert installation CD/DVD to USB
balenaEtcher News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
POX added balenaEtcher as alternative to macUSB- Creative_joe liked balenaEtcher
Featured in Lists
This is going to be a list of the free tools/software that can be used mostly in any field. it's based on websites …
These are all the software I use on my windows machine. I am privacy freak. So, I mostly use open source software. …
When I look for new apps, my priorities are (in order): - do they do something useful? - do they aim to do it in a …
What is balenaEtcher?
balenaEtcher is a free and open-source image burner with support for Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux. It makes USB and SD card image burning as simple and fast as possible.
FEATURES
- Validated Burning - No more writing images on corrupted cards and wondering why your device isn't booting.
- Hard Drive Friendly - Makes drive selection obvious to avoid wiping your entire hard-drive
- Beautiful Interface - Who said burning SD cards has to be an eyesore.
- Open Source - Made with JS, HTML, node.js and Electron. Dive in and contribute!
- Cross Platform - Works for everyone, no more complicated install instructions.
balenaEtcher information
Developed by
balena.io Licensing
Open Source (Apache-2.0) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 3.5Alternatives
55 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
OS & Utilities, CD/DVD ToolsGitHub repository
- 32,730 Stars
- 2,305 Forks
- 622 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Etcher is really one of the best tools for writting iso images on usb stick ! It detect everything and writte a lot of files. It format all the usb stick and take all the space, not only a partition. No more error!
etcher uses electron (for no justifiable reason), which is known to use a lot of RAM. Hence it's not efficient.
balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties
Some issues about tracking and crash reports analytics, unfortunately. Might want to consider Rufus instead
I tried burning a flash drive with Ubuntu with no luck, and after that got an error when trying to process the (perfectly fine, newly downloaded) ISO image. Then tried with Rufus instead instead, which worked. Besides, what other users write about data harvesting doesn't sound good.
Years ago BalenaEtcher started collecting/sharing private information despite that users had opted out, they claimed it was a bug: https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-concerns-with-etcher-1-4-4/4103/17
Apparently it never was just a bug, leading Tails to no longer recommending BalenaEtcher for installation due to serious privacy concerns: https://tails.net/news/rufus/index.en.html
Its saddening to see such a great and helpful piece of software go rogue.
Dislike it because it's based on Electron, that's why it's absurdly bloated beyond reason compared to other alternatives. Oh, and its code is written in JavaScript (TypeScript) with some HTML and so... you're basically downloading an entire browser just to use a glorified web page masquerading as a standalone application
It doesn't allow you to choose a partition from the usb, just the full usb.