A redundant yet hopefully easy enough guide to creating a macOS Monterey installer for reference
Note: This guide is for creating a bootable USB installer for macOS from macOS. It's been done 100 times, but I'd like a place to point people using this thread who might not be familiar.
Grammar Note: I'm leaving periods outside of quotations to not cause any confusion.
Why?
I'm the type of person to read multiple guides so why not one more? This time I figured we'd go the less technical route. After all, the goal of this platform is use macOS so we're going to be use Apple features.
Step 1 - Obtaining macOS Monterey like normie.
Download macOS from the App Store by searching "macOS Monterey". When you see the OS in the search results simply select "view", then select "get", then click download at the prompt. This will open Software Update and begin downloading right away. It should take around 10-20 minutes depending on your network as it is over 12 gigs in size.
Step 2 - Quit that installer, we don't want that here.
Once the download is finished, the installer will open. We can simply press Command Q to quit the installer. It will prompt you once more, select quit.
Step 3 - Flash drive formatting using Disk Utility, like an adult.
We need to format our flash drive. I'm using a USB-C/A SanDisk for this but you can use anything over 16GB in size. Using spotlight (Command Spacebar) type in "Disk Utility" and press enter.
Once in Disk Utility, press Command 2 so we can see a full device tree for each drive we have connected. Once you've carefully identified your flash drive, right click the parent (top of the tree) and select Erase. You'll be prompted to erase the drive here. Please copy my settings in the picture below. And yes, please name the drive "MyVolume" exactly.
Step 4 - Creating the installer using Terminal. C/P, password, press Y.
Using Apple's support pages for creating a bootable drive is on brand for this post so we'll be doing that. Open Terminal using Spotlight by pressing Command Spacebar and typing "Terminal" and pressing enter. Copy and paste the code below.
Code:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume
Note: Are you making an installer for another version of macOS? Check out the source for this section:
Use an external drive or secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install macOS.
support.apple.com
You'll be prompted for a password in Terminal. It will not show you what you are typing but trust that it is being inputted and press Enter when done.
Then you'll be prompted with a "type Y for yes" situation as it will need to format the drive MyVolume. Type "Y" and press Enter. By the end of it Terminal will look like this and your flash drive on your desktop will be renamed "Install macOS Monterey". Good day.
I SAID GOOD DAY