FAQs

Frequently asked questions

Answers to question frequently asked about TINU:

• What do I need to use to use TINU? To use TINU you need a machine or a virtual machine that does run Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.0 or a more recent version of Mac OS X/macOS, a 8 gb or bigger USB thumb drive or a partition of at least 8gb (must be inside a drive that uses the GUID partition table), and a copy of a Mac OS X/macOS installer app downloaded from the App Store, which should be inside the /Applications folder or in the root of a storage device connected to the system.

• Which are the versions of the Mac OS X/macOS installer app that can be used to create a bootable macOS installer? TINU can create macOS install medias from Mavericks up to the latest macOS versions, inducing also beta and newly released installers, to work with TINU the installer app must contain it's original "createinstallmedia" executable into it's Resources folder, and also all the other files inside of the app should be the original files of the app.

• Why can't I use TINU to create installers of Mac OS X Mountain Lion and older? You can't use such old versions of Mac OS X to create bootale installers with TINU because those versions don't support the "createinstallmedia" method for the creation of bootable installers, TINU has been designed to use only this method for creation of bootable installers, and also this app aims to be future proof rather than backwards compatible with such old versions.

• Will a bootale macOS installer created with TINU work on a real mac? Yes it will, because TINU uses the "createinstallmedia" method that is actually the official method that is recomended by apple for the creation of bootale installers.

• Does TINU use the vanilla method? Bootable installers created with TINU are vanilla? TINU is designed to be a simple tool to make the vanilla method easy and accessible to everyone, so it is basically an user interface which implements the official apple's command line vanilla method for the creation of bootable macOS installers, and also automates some of the steps normally needed for this standard vanilla method, and it also makes a series of operations to make sure that the installer creation will succed and that any error during the installer creation process will be detected.

• What changes beetween TINU and other mothods or apps? TINU is basically a simpler whay to use the command line vanilla method to create bootale macOS installers, which is a method which other apps may not use, so installers created with TINU are exactly the same installers you would create using the command line method, the only changements are some small customizations like the drive icon and the readme file, which can be disabled into the advanced options.

• TINU seems to just copy the installer app on the selected drive, so what's the point of this app? It seems like it is just a copy of the installer app but it isn't, in fact the "createinstallmedia" executale used by TINU creates, on the selected drive, some invisible files and directories which are needed to make the isntaller inside the macOS installer app bootable, so this allowos you to boot from the selected drive and install macOS without having to use an installed os on the machine.

• The advanced option to install the clover EFI folder does not work or gives me an error message First of all make sure that you have selected the EFI folder and not any other subfolder or parent folder and that the content of the EFI folder is intact, it must contain all the clover files and folders (it must also contain the /CLOVER/drivers64 folder if you are using versions 2.0.x). Make also sure that any EFI partition in your system is unmounted before starting the creation of your bootable macOS installer and that the name of the EFI partition of your target drive is EFI.

• Will TINU install clover or a bootloader on my install media? At the time being the answer is no, but support for automatic and customizable clover installation is planned for the future releases of the app.

• TINU has not formatted the EFI partition of USB drive, why? By default TINU will format only the target partition selected by the user (if the partition is on a drive that which uses the GUID partition scheme), but if the target partition is on a drive which does not use GUID, the whole drive will be formatted using GUID, in the advanced options, in the genral section you find also an option to force TINU to format the entire drive instead of just the selected partition.

• Do I need to use disk utility or do any other thing before using TINU? The answer is no, you don't have to, just make sure to have all you need into the computer as the requirements screen of TINU indicates, of course you can do something first if you want, for example if you want to use multiple partitions in your target drive you can add them using disk utility or others disk management software, but to prevent TINU from formatting everything on your drive you have to make sure that it uses the GUID partition table.

• Why can't I use TINU on Mavericks and older versions of mac? You can't use TINU on old Mac OS X versions because it needs some features which have been introduced in Mac OS X Yosemite.

• Can I use TINU on 32 bit systems or PPC systems like older Macs? No you can't because TINU is made in Swift, which can be used to make only 64 bit intel apps on the mac platform, and also TINU does requre Yosemite to work, which is an os which requires a 64 bit intel machine.

• TINU seems to take a lot of time to complete the bootable macOS installer creation process, is it normal? can I stop it? It's basically not TINU's fault, TINU does simply launch the "createinstallmedia" executable and then waits for it to finish his work, the process may take several minutes or hours in some rare cases, depending on tings like the amount of data that has to be copied, speed of drives and storage devices involved and the performance of the machine used, but we suggest to just leave the TINU window to his work and everything will go right, so it's better do not try to hide or miniutarize it, but to let it do it's job, and TINU is designed to let the user to know if there are any erros, so in case it detects errors you will know it.

• Why I can't hide, miniaturize or close the TINU window while the creation of the bootale macOS installer is in progress? Those things have been blocked to prevent the creation process from crashing or not working properly and to guarantee that the process will go right.

• Why does TINU asks me for the password multiple times? Because TINU performs a series of tasks which requires administrator priviledges and they way they are implemented doesn't allow TINU to keep those priviladges for itself or for other tasks which requires them (this is also done for security reasons and for user awareness). The tasks performed by TINU which requires special access are: Mounting and unmounting partitions and drives (including EFI partitions), closing processes (opened apps which can interfear with TINU or other installer creations which are running on the computer or canceling the currrent installer creation process) and creating installers.

• I am having problems opening the app Try to open with right click->open on the app's icon and make sure that you are using the official latest release of the app, that you are using a supported version of Mac OS X/macOS, an admin account on the current machine, also check security and anti virus options of the system, which some times may block this kind of app.

• I am having some bugs or problems, what can I do? if you can't find the solution to your problem open a bug request on this GitHub repo and specify as most things you can of your system, the installer app, the version of TINU, mac os version, etc ..., more details will help us to solve the issue.

• I have an idea or a suggestion for this app Send and email to the app's developer at piecaruso97@gmail.com, or reply here on GitHub

• Can I re-host the download or the source code of this program? Yes you can, but we recommend to our users to trust only original releases here on this repo.

• Can I use source code from TINU in my own project? Yes you can, but make sure to respect terms and conditions of the GNU GPL v3 license used for this project.

• The usage of this app is causing me software or hardware problems The TINU developer and affiliates/contributors do not takes any responsibility for that, you are responsible for what you do with this app and with your machine and also for any damage that can happen while using this software or the source code, for any problem open an issue in the bugs section.