Hidden Setup Option in Raspberry Imager

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Not sure if this has been posted already somewhere, but the latest Raspberry-Imager does have a hidden option which makes the setup of a new device a bit more comfortable.

While having the Raspberry-Imager open, you can open a settings menu by pressing CRTL-SHIFT-X

There you have several options to configure the SD card while image is writing:

  • Setup hostname
  • Enable SSH
  • Configure WiFi
  • Configure Locales

I’ve tested it with the Raspberry OS lite image. It might not work on other images like Ubuntu.
I’ve seen this for Mac Devices so far, but i’ve tested it on my Linux Mint Notebook where the screenshot below is taken from.

Maybe a comfortable option instead of editing config files for first start.

image

The tool is available directly from Raspberry Foundation:

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I just upgraded Raspberry Pi Imager from 1.3 to 1.6.1 on windows and this seems to work.
It did not work on 1.3.

image

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Yes, the feature has been integrated in the latest 1.6 versions only as far as i know.
I do have 1.6 (latest version of repository) and it is there too.

Update:
Just wrote an image with options set to an SD card and mounted it on my spare Raspberry 4

Worked without issues. IP adress received, Hostname and locales were set as expected and SSH is working.

Yes, can be done with some text editing, but i feel more comfortable with it

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I usually set them at first boot, by default it wil get a DHCP adress when you use a new deployed image and after boot run sudo raspi-config.

Then you will get a menu where you can set these options.
Then write the options and it will be stored.

Only manual editing I do is setting the fixed ip adress after first boot.
After that do a reboot and you are all good to go

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For this you need a screen, keyboard, mouse attached.
The settings are mainly for people running the device headless.

Before that you needed to edit some files on the SD card, this is now done by the tool.

If you have screen, keyboard, mouse of course you do not need to set this before first start.

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That’s correct, I always run them on that setup on first boot, if something is wrong with the hardware you can see it happening.
Being in IT for a living makes the availability of these items a no-brainer for me.

Had a board with a kernel panic a few weeks ago, that would be hard to spot in a headless setup.
Then I would have been hunting for quite a few hours to determine why the Pi doesn’t appear in my network ( been there once :wink: )

After the inital setup i run them headless from that point onward.

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Never had any issues with that. And my devices are all easy to reach.
If a restart does not solve it, i connect it to one of my screens.

But that goes beyond the topic of this thread.

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I don’t understand why it is a hidden feature. I think that a lot of people would like to use these options.

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Originally it’s not a hidden feature, as it was posted on Raspberry Blog:

But obviously not many people have read that as it’s meanwhile after two months still surprising to many users.

Beside that @abcd567 just noticed me that it was also a day later in discussion here.

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