Setting up headless Raspberry Pi OS on macOS

Setting up headless Raspberry Pi OS on macOS.md

Download the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite image from https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/ (2022-04-04 at the time of this writing).

Insert your microSD card. Use Raspberry Pi Imager to burn the image to your microSD card. Make to select "Set username and password" in the config before starting. Name the user pi and select your own password.

Ensure the disk is mounted again, then enable SSH.

$ touch /Volumes/boot/ssh

If you're planning on using the built-in WiFi on the Raspberry Pi 3/4/Zero W, add your Wifi configuration. Create the following file:

$ nano /Volumes/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

And add this to it:

country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
	ssid="[SSID]"
	psk="[password]"
}

Eject your SD card and insert it into your Pi.

Plug in your Pi and give it a minute to boot and connect to your network, either over WiFi or ethernet.

Copy your public SSH key the the Pi.

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh [email protected] "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Configure your Pi.

$ ssh [email protected]

$ sudo raspi-config

That's it! 🏆

Some ideas for next steps:

• Raspberry Pi Music Server
• Raspberry Pi VPN Server

Glad you found it useful!

Thank you so much for this!

Really great. Thank you! Made the set up so quick and easy!

I followed every steps, but cannot ssh to [email protected] because it asks for password. Tried raspberry but didn't work.

Thanks for pointing this out @theoctober19th. In the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS (2022-04-04), the "pi" user has been removed. I've just updated the section about writing the image with instructions on how to create the "pi" user.

Thanks @celeryclub for making setup for easy:)