Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on OS XmacOS from the Kali Linux Guide by OnWorks

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Creating a Bootable Kali USB Drive on OS X/macOS‌

OS X/macOS is based on UNIX, so the process of creating a bootable Kali Linux USB drive is similar to the Linux procedure. Once you have downloaded and verified your chosen Kali ISO file, use dd to copy it over to your USB stick.

To identify the device name of the USB key, run diskutil list to list the disks available on your system. Next, insert your USB key and run the diskutil list command again. The second output should list an additional disk. You can determine the device name of the USB key by com- paring the output from both commands. Look for a new line identifying your USB disk and note the /dev/diskX where X represents the disk ID.

You should make sure that the USB key is not mounted, which can be accomplished with an explicit unmount command (assuming /dev/disk6 is the device name of the USB key):

$ diskutil unmount /dev/disk6

Now proceed to execute the dd command. This time, add a supplementary parameter — bs for block size. It defines the size of the block that is read from the input file and then written to the output file.

# dd if=kali-linux-light-2017.1-amd64.iso of=/dev/disk6 bs=1M

1011+0 records in

1011+0 records out

1060241408 bytes transferred in 327.061 secs (3242328 bytes/sec)

# dd if=kali-linux-light-2017.1-amd64.iso of=/dev/disk6 bs=1M

1011+0 records in

1011+0 records out

1060241408 bytes transferred in 327.061 secs (3242328 bytes/sec)

That’s it. Your USB key is now ready and you can boot from it or use it to install Kali Linux.

Booting an Alternate Disk To boot from an alternate drive on an OS X/macOS system, bring up the boot menu by

on OS X/macOS pressing and holding the Option key immediately after powering on the device and selecting the drive you want to use.

For more information, see Apple’s knowledge base1.