Raspberry Pi Imager Now Comes With Advanced Options

Writing an operating system to a Raspberry Pi involves micro SD cards and a tool such as balenaEtcher. Around a year ago an official Raspberry Pi Imager tool was released, this tool offered a simple means to write an OS to a card and it came with a great choice of OS for retro gaming, 3D printing and general computing. In the latest update there is a hidden advanced menu offering more configuration options.

Animated GIF of Raspberry Pi Imager Advanced Features

(Image credit: Future)

In the Advanced Options menu we can change

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  • Overscan, to remove borders from our screen.
  • Hostname, identify your Pi on a network.
  • SSH on boot, useful for headless and remote projects.
  • WiFi, setup your WiFi without editing a config file.
  • Locale, set your language and location.

These changes can be made for a single session, for example writing a one off OS to an micro SD card, or we can set Raspberry Pi Imager to use these settings each time. For Raspberry Pi users these advanced features are a welcome addition to an already great application. For they an now quickly and easily set these settings and then write the OS to a micro SD card, rather than tweak config files which could be quite a task if working with multiple cards.

Les Pounder
  • anscarlett
    Some useful features there, my first step before even ejecting a freshly installed image is to copy a.ssh and wpa_supplicant.conf file.

    I'd like the option to change the default user account from pi.

    What I'd really like is a cloud-init image for the pi.
    Reply
  • remohoeppli
    Love it! I did write a script to automate few steps I repeatedly do when configuring a new pi for a DIY project. It also covers static IP configuration, swap size, and more. Maybe it helps some of you:
    https://medium.com/codex/speed-up-your-raspberry-pi-configuration-1de16f894de8https://github.com/it-monkey/py-init
    Reply
  • outlan
    This is GREAT! But I really wonder why it's a "hidden" feature. Shouldn't it just be baked in? Inexperienced folks could just skip it...
    Reply