Although macOS Monterey is currently in beta, you can create a bootable external drive with which to perform a clean install of the system Is very helpful. This way we can completely remove the previous installation and create a new one which, in theory at least, should have better performance and fewer failures.
What do we need?
For this process we will need a flash memory with at least 16 GB of storage. Keep in mind that we will completely erase your content, so if necessary, we will save the files to another location.
We will also need a copy of the Monterey installer application. We can get this app through the Developer Portal or by following this tutorial.
Last but not least, the Mac with which we create the installer, even if it is intended for another Mac, must be compatible with macOS Monterey.
Terminal, let’s go
Well, the necessary ingredients together Let’s get to work. The process is quite simple and consists of these steps:
- We connect the flash memory to the Mac and change the name to “FLASH”, without the quotes.
- We open the app Terminal, which we can search using Spotlight.
- We copy and paste the following
sudo / Applications / Install macOS 12 Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume / Volumes / FLASH –nointeraction
- We press Enter (↩︎).
- We write down our Mac password and press Enter again.
The process can take up to 20 minutes depending on the speed of the computer we are using. We will see several process flags in the same terminal and when it is finished we will see “Done” in the last line. And just like that, we created a bootable Monterey installer.
And now what?
We can now proceed to install macOS Monterey from scratch. To do this, simply turn off the computer, connect the flash memory and turn it on by pressing the option key (⌥) in the case of Intel computers or we keep pressing the power button until we see the “Boot Options” on Mac with Apple Silicon. When the menu to choose appears, we select the Monterey installer.
remember that some Intel Macs with T2 chip require us to enable this external boot option. To do this, we simply shut down the Mac and turn it on by pressing Command (⌘) + R. Then in the menu Utilities we choose * Startup Security Utility and we will mark the option Allow booting from external media. After restarting the computer, we will be able to use our installer on the Mac.
Keep in mind that in order for the installation to be from scratch, it is necessary to erase the contents of the entire hard drive, the process is very simple, as we explain in the video that leads this section.
And it is simple. We created a bootable macOS Monterey installer and saw how to use it to create a clean system install. A resource that requires us to reinstall apps and settings after the process, but can improve errors and overall computer performance.
