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Create a Bootable Windows 11 USB on macOS in 2025 — Step-by-Step Guide

Last updated: Tue 5 Aug 15:32 UTC

Creating a bootable Windows USB on macOS shouldn’t be this hard — but it is. Thankfully, thanks to the work of Alvaro (for the original bootable-win-on-mac.md ) and Vadim (for building WinDiskWriter), the process is now much simpler.

This guide walks you through two working methods on macOS Sequoia (15.5) to create a bootable USB for Windows 11. I’ve personally tested both, and they work. Pick the one that suits you best.

Option A — The Easy Way: WinDiskWriter

1. Download Windows 11 image (i.e. ISO file)

Go to Microsoft’s official website and download the Windows 11 ISO file.

2. Download and Install WinDiskWriter

Get it from the GitHub Releases page.

3. Run WinDiskWriter

1. Open the WinDiskWriter app.
2. Select your Windows 11 ISO and the USB device.
3. Click Start.

That’s it! Your USB should now be bootable.

Option B— Terminal Method (for advanced users)

Most users can skip this. But if you want to do it manually, or if Option A fails, this method works too.

1. Download Windows 11 image (i.e. ISO file)

Same as before — grab it from the Microsoft site.

2. Identify your USB drive

Plug in your USB to Mac and run:

diskutil list

Find the disk that matches your USB drive. For example: In this case, disk4 is the USB.

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME         SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme             *8.1 GB     disk4
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WINDOWS11    8.1 GB     disk4s1

3. Format USB drive

Replace disk4 with your actual disk identifier:

diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WINDOWS11" MBR disk4

4. Mount the Windows ISO

Double-click the Windows 11 ISO file to mount it. It should appear under /Volumes, usually something like:

ls -lh /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9

5. Copy (almost) all files to USB drive

If sources/install.wim is less than 4GB, you can copy all the files from the mounted disk image onto the USB drive with the following command:

ls -lh /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/sources/install.wim

rsync -avh --progress /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/ /Volumes/WINDOWS11

If sources/install.wim is more than 4GB, then we'll need to split the file before copying it. In the meantime, we can copy all the other files from the mounted image onto the USB drive with the following command:

rsync -avh --progress --exclude=sources/install.wim /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/ /Volumes/WINDOWS11

6. Split and copy install.wim

FAT32 doesn’t support files over 4GB. Microsoft’s official solution is to split the file, and there is a free utility available in macOS and Linux to do so — wimlib. The tool can be installed with Homebrew:

brew install wimlib

Then split and copy sources/install.wim using the following command:

wimlib-imagex split /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/sources/install.wim /Volumes/WINDOWS11/sources/install.swm 3800

This creates chunks of 3.8GB file, small enough for FAT32.

Conclusion

For reasons unknown, Apple doesn’t make it easy to create a bootable Windows USB. But thanks to tools like WinDiskWriter and open-source utilities like wimlib, it’s possible — with a little patience.

Both of these methods have worked for me on macOS Sequoia (15.5) and Windows 11. That said, future macOS or Windows updates might break these steps. If you find a newer or better method, please leave a comment so others can benefit — I’ll update this guide.