Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 has been released, bringing with it a brand new look, better accessibility and a couple of nifty new features baked in.
A preview was released in October so, if you read regularly or you tried it out yourself, you’ll know the broad strokes of what’s new here.
Raspberry Pi describe the update as a “complete reimagining” of the tool, switching to a “wizard”-like guided setup process to let users know what’s happening each step.
“Each step gets the full window to itself, with room for helpful descriptions, validation feedback, and relevant links. It’s a more spacious, less crowded experience all round,” the team say.
A new colour scheme that riffs on the Pi’s brand colours and greater use of white space helps to guide attention to relevant settings and options. A less vivid but more conscientious and considered design than in the 1.x series.
The “Customisation” options (on compatible OS images) are no longer hidden away but appear as a dedicated step. Available options easier to see in 2.0 tool, including set timezones, wi-fi passwords and, new in this version, pre-configure Raspberry Pi Connect.
The tool now presents users with a summary of changes about to be made before they hit write (and whatever USB, SD card or external drive is selected gets erased). Advanced users may find the extra click annoying, but as a guardrail it’s welcome.
Accessibility is bolstered with in-app labels, buttons and toggles exposed to screen readers, and the UI works with keyboard navigation and other assistive tools.
Various app options (accessed by clicking the button in the bottom left corner of the window) let you disable telemetry, disable warnings, auto-eject media after writing, and new in 2.0, change the repository the app fetches images from.
Though the Raspberry Pi Imager makes it easy to find, download and flash OS images for Raspberry Pi devices, it is also a general purpose ISO/IMG flashing tool akin to Balena Etcher. Ergo, you don’t need to own a Raspberry Pi to find this useful.
Get Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0
The Raspberry Pi Imager is a free, open source and cross platform app, with official builds available for Windows, macOS and Linux in both GUI and, new in Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0, a CLI package.
You can download the new Raspberry Pi Imager software for Windows, macOS, or Linux from the project GitHub releases page or the Raspberry Pi software download page (the Linux build is an AppImage so to run it on Ubuntu install libfuse2t64 first).