OS installer tool privacy ratings
Tools that download operating system installers and write bootable USB drives.
12 OS downloaders and bootable USB tools are rated against 4 public criteria, and 12 have enough evidence for a letter grade. Of the 3 with a known jurisdiction, 3 are based in a Five Eyes country, and 3 in the wider Fourteen Eyes.
Open-source OS downloaders and bootable USB tools only · Criteria for this category · Suggest an addition · Markdown
| Name | Grade | Score | Data | Jurisdiction | Open source | No trackers or telemetry | No ads or data sales | Independent audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A macOS app from the makers of UTM that builds Windows 11 installer ISO images from Microsoft's update files, using UUP dump APIs and converter scripts. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
A GNOME app for writing disk images to USB drives, which can also download popular Linux distribution images directly. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
A macOS utility that lists and downloads macOS installers and Apple silicon firmware files from Apple's servers, and can build app bundles, disk images, bootable ISOs and installer packages. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Command-line tools that download Windows, macOS and Linux images (quickget) and create and run QEMU virtual machines with preset configurations (quickemu). |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
A Linux command-line tool that creates bootable Windows installation USB drives from an ISO file or DVD, with legacy BIOS and UEFI support. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
The Fedora Project's tool for downloading Fedora images and writing them, or other ISO files, to USB drives, with a restore option to reformat the drive afterwards. |
Grade C | 65 | 100% | – | Yes | Partial | Yes | No |
Raspberry Pi's official tool for downloading operating system images and writing them to SD cards and USB drives, with options to preconfigure hostname, Wi-Fi, users and SSH. |
Grade C | 65 | 100% | United Kingdom Five Eyes | Yes | Partial | Yes | No |
A website and set of scripts that fetch Windows update files (UUP) from Microsoft's servers and convert them into Windows installation ISO images. |
Grade C | 65 | 100% | – | Partial | Yes | Yes | No |
A cross-platform app from balena that writes OS images to SD cards and USB drives and validates the written data. |
Grade D | 40 | 100% | United Kingdom Five Eyes | Yes | No | Partial | No |
A Windows utility that formats USB drives and writes bootable USB media from ISO and disk images, and can download Windows ISOs. |
Grade F | 30 | 100% | – | Yes | No | No | No |
A tool that prepares a USB drive so ISO, WIM, IMG, VHD and EFI files copied onto it can be booted from a menu, without reformatting the drive for each image. |
Grade F | 30 | 100% | – | Yes | No | No | No |
Microsoft's Windows tool that downloads Windows 11 and creates a bootable USB drive or ISO file for installing or reinstalling Windows. |
Grade F | 10 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Partial | No |
Questions
What is the most private option among OS downloaders and bootable USB tools?
No pick has been made yet. The table above is sorted by score, based on public evidence.
How are OS downloaders and bootable USB tools rated?
Each entry answers 4 questions: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales and independent audit. Answers need links to evidence. See the full criteria.
Does jurisdiction matter?
Jurisdiction decides which laws can compel a provider to hand over data. Each entry shows its country and whether it is in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. The data a provider can hand over depends mostly on what it stores and who holds the keys. Read about jurisdictions and the CLOUD Act.