Etcher is a free open-source app that lets you quickly and easily flash an operating system image to a USB drive or SD card. With more and more devices unable to read optical media, users who want to install a new operating system need a simple, easy-to-use way to create a bootable drive or card. Etcher provides that method.

Simple and user-friendly

The heart of Etcher is its simple, visually pleasing user interface. Once you've selected an image you can use its simple, graphical menu to select a drive to flash the OS image to. The clear drive selection prevents the age-old problem of accidentally wiping your primary hard drive while preparing an OS image. The same app works across several different platforms, allowing you to use it on a Mac, PC or other device. At the end of the writing process, which can take a few minutes, the app checks to see that the new image has been successfully created, this can make the process a little slower, so if you don't want to bother with it you can disable it in the app's settings.

A simple app for a tricky process

Etcher is reliable, easy-to-use and open-source, an ideal tool for anyone who has to frequently create bootable discs (or help users do it). It's not the smallest app in the world, but that's a minor quibble about a useful piece of software.