Raspberry Pi Developer's Guide: Install

Installing operating system images

This resource explains how to install a Raspberry Pi operating system image on an SD card.

We recommend general users download NOOBS, which is designed to be very easy to use. NOOBS is an Raspbian installer helping you to install the Raspbian.

However, more advanced users looking to install a particular image should use this guide.

Download the image

The Raspbian with Raspberry Pi Desktop image contained in the ZIP archive is over 4GB in size and uses the ZIP64) format.
To uncompress the archive, a unzip tool that supports ZIP64 is required. The following zip tools support ZIP64:

• 7-Zip (Windows)
• The Unarchiver (Mac)
• Unzip (Linux)

Etcher is a graphical SD card writing tool that works on Mac OS, Linux and Windows, and is the easiest option for most users. Etcher also supports writing images directly from the zip file, without any unzipping required. To write your image with Etcher:

• Download Etcher and install it.
• Connect an SD card reader with the SD card inside.
• Open Etcher and select from your hard drive the Raspberry Pi .img or .zip file you wish to write to the SD card.
• Select the SD card you wish to write your image to.
• Review your selections and click 'Flash!' to begin writing data to the SD card.