updated
Sep 18, 2026
190MB
file size
5.2K
downloads
balenaEtcher is a free, open-source tool for Windows, Mac and Linux that writes ISO and IMG files to USB sticks and SD cards in three clicks, checks the result, and hides your system drives so you cannot wipe the wrong one.
balenaEtcher writes an ISO or IMG file to a USB stick or SD card in three clicks, on Windows, Mac and Linux.
It hides your internal drives while it does it, which is the single reason most people pick it over the alternatives.
You can download balenaEtcher 2.1.7 here, and it is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence.
What It Actually Does
The whole interface is three buttons in a row: choose the image, choose the drive, press Flash. There is nothing to configure, no partition scheme to pick and no boot mode to guess at.
When the write finishes, Etcher reads the drive back and checks it against the image. That step is worth waiting for - a card that writes without errors and still fails to boot is usually a bad card rather than a bad image, and this is what tells you which.
The safety behaviour is the other half. Your system drives are hidden by default and selecting a large disk triggers a warning, so the classic mistake of writing an installer over your own hard drive is hard to make here.
Which Version to Download
Take 2.1.7. It is the current stable build, dated September 2026, and it is what almost everyone should be running.
There is also a 2.1.7 pre-release carrying a copyright fix and some macOS hardening work. Pre-release means exactly that, so unless you are on macOS and hitting a signing or permissions problem, the stable build is the better choice.
If you are on Windows 7, Windows 8 or a 32-bit system, modern Etcher will not run at all - the last version that works on those is 1.7.9, and it is old enough that Rufus is a better answer than an outdated Etcher.
What Etcher Sends Home
This is the part the reviews do not mention and the part worth knowing before you install it.
The Tails project, which makes a privacy-focused Linux system, dropped balenaEtcher from its Windows instructions and explained why it switched to Rufus: Etcher began sending the file name of the image you are writing and the model of your USB stick back to balena, and possibly onward to third parties. The app also shows promotional content for balena's other services.
For most people this is a nuisance rather than a risk - the name of an Ubuntu ISO tells nobody anything. It matters if the image name itself is sensitive, which is exactly the case Tails was worried about.
Worth checking: open Settings before your first flash and look for the option covering error reports and usage statistics. Older builds let you turn that reporting off there, and it costs you nothing to look.
What It Will Not Do
Etcher writes images and that is all it writes. It reads ISO and IMG files and zipped versions of them, and it has no interest in anything more exotic.
It will not put several operating systems on one stick, it will not create a persistent storage partition, and it will not format a drive back to a normal usable state afterwards - that last one surprises people, because a flashed stick often looks broken to Windows until you reformat it.
It is also a heavy download. The Windows installer runs to around 190MB because the app is built on Electron, which is roughly a hundred times the size of Rufus for a job they both do in the same few seconds.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
Here is the tell: look at what you are trying to put on the stick.
If it is one Linux image or a Raspberry Pi card, Etcher is the right tool and you can stop reading. If it is a Windows installer that needs a specific partition scheme, or you want to bypass a hardware check, Rufus gives you the controls Etcher deliberately hides.
If you want several ISO files on one stick and a boot menu to pick between them, that is Ventoy - you copy files onto the drive normally and it handles the rest.
YUMI and MultiOS-USB do the same job a different way, building the menu as they write.
For booting machines over the network instead of handing out sticks, iVentoy serves the images to every PC on the LAN, and ImageUSB is the one for writing the same image to a stack of drives at once.
If the job is actually running Windows from the drive rather than installing from it, WinToUSB is built for that, and Clonezilla handles cloning a whole disk to another one.
And if you need to open the image rather than write it, ImgDrive mounts it as a virtual drive.
To change what is inside it, PowerISO and UltraISO edit the contents directly.
The HDD, SSD and USB tools category collects the rest, including UNetbootin for turning a distro into a bootable stick without downloading the ISO yourself.
Two guides worth having open alongside it: running ChromeOS Flex from a USB drive walks through a flash end to end, and dual-booting Windows and Linux on one SSD covers what happens after the stick has done its job.
Quick questions
Is balenaEtcher free?
Yes, completely. It is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence, with no paid version, no trial and nothing to register.
Which file types can it write?
ISO and IMG files, including zipped copies of them. Anything else needs converting first, or a different tool.
Why is my USB stick the wrong size afterwards?
Writing an image replaces the drive's partition layout with the image's own, so Windows often shows only a small part of it. Reformatting the drive gives you the full capacity back.
Does it work on Windows 7 or a 32-bit PC?
Not the current version, which needs 64-bit Windows 10 or later. Version 1.7.9 was the last to support older and 32-bit systems, though a current alternative is a better idea than an abandoned build.
Can it put two operating systems on one stick?
No. Each write replaces everything on the drive, so for a multiboot stick you want Ventoy or YUMI instead.
Does it send any information about me?
It reports anonymous usage data to balena, which has included the image file name and the drive model, and it shows promotional content in the app. Check the Settings screen for the reporting option before your first flash.
Download balenaEtcher 2.1.7 and see how it handles your drive, or tell us how it went if you have used it before.
