make macos 26 tahoe beta 1 bootable usb (1 Viewer)

[tywebb]

This morning apple announced macOS 26 Tahoe and released beta 1.

Here is the link for the full installer for the Tahoe beta 1: https://swcdn.apple.com/content/dow...7xchfjwh4244kwixjsut4boc/InstallAssistant.pkg

You can make a Tahoe bootable USB installer by first formatting a 32GB or 64GB usb as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and naming it Untitled.

After downloading the Tahoe Beta 1 installer (which so far is nameless, even though we now know it has the name Tahoe) you can run this in Terminal to make the bootable USB:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

The command for future betas will probably change to

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Tahoe\ beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

and then with public release (or even release candidates) to

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Tahoe.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

 

[tywebb]

here is how you can check the build number for InstallAssistant.pkg even before downloading it:

replace the g at the end of the link with a m to make a link to pkm file like this:

https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/26/20/082-55599-A_UZPH7KLA4Q/fddo2aezqd7xchfjwh4244kwixjsut4boc/InstallAssistant.pkm

download the pkm file (much smaller than the pkg file), open it with textedit and you see this:

...version="25.0.5279.13"...

well we know the build is 25A5279m as that has already been published by apple at https://developer.apple.com/news/releases/ and as that website frequently changes, here is a screenshot



so in the number 25.0.5279.13 in pkm file, the second number 0,1,2,... is A,B,C,... and the fourth number 1,2,3,... is a,b,c,...

hence the second number 0 is A and the fourth number 13 is m and so build is confirmed to indeed be 25A5279m

 

[tywebb]

how to find future beta full installers via terminal

run this in terminal

for file in $(curl -# https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-16beta-1.sucatalog | grep com_apple_MobileAsset_MacSoftwareUpdate.plist | grep -Evw '(com_apple_MobileAsset_MacSoftwareUpdate.plist.integrityDataV1)' | sed -e s/"<string>"//g -e s/"<\/string>"//g -e s/\ //g); do
curl -s $file | egrep -A 1 -m 2 '(>Build<|OSVersion)' | sed -e s/"<string>"//g -e s/"<\/string>"//g -e s/\ //g | sed -e s/"<key>"//g -e s/"<\/key>"//g -e s/\ //g
echo $file | sed -e "s/com_apple_MobileAsset_MacSoftwareUpdate.plist/InstallAssistant.pkg/g"
done

at the moment you see this:

            Build
            25A5279m
--
            OSVersion
            26.0
https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/26/20/082-55599-A_UZPH7KLA4Q/fddo2aezqd7xchfjwh4244kwixjsut4boc/InstallAssistant.pkg

which is the beta 1 link i put before but later it will have higher builds as more betas are released - so you don't have to wait for some bro to post the link... you can find it yourself instead

note it is common for the full installer to be released a day after the ota update however (except for beta 1)