NOOBS (New Out of Box Software)

Please note that NOOBS is no longer supported or recommended. Please switch to Raspberry Pi Imager. If you still require multi-boot functionality, consider switching to PINN, which is an unofficial fork with additional features.

An easy Operating System installer for the Raspberry Pi

NOOBS is designed to make it easy to select and install operating systems for the Raspberry Pi without having to worry about manually imaging your SD card.

The latest official release of NOOBS can be downloaded from https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS_latest

For information on previous releases and version changelists, visit https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/releases

^{*NOTE: The list of OSes in this image is indicative only. It will vary according to your Raspberry Pi model and the availability of OSes on our remote download repository.}

About

On first boot NOOBS will repartition your SD card and allow you to select which OSes you want to install from a list. This OS list is automatically generated from both locally available OSes (i.e. those contained in the /os directory on disk) or those available from our remote repository (network connection required).

Only the latest version of each OS will ever be displayed meaning that you can be sure that you have installed the most up-to-date release of your selected OS.

On any subsequent boot you can then press the SHIFT key to enter the NOOBS interface and easily reinstall your choice of OSes.

The NOOBS interface provides the following functionality:

• <b>Install</b>: Installs the selected OSes onto your SD card. Changing this selection erases all OSes currently installed.
• <b>Edit Config</b>: Opens a text editor allowing the cmdline and config for the selected installed OS to be edited.
• <b>Online Help</b>: [Networking Required] Open a browser that displays the Raspberry Pi Help page ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/ ), allowing people to quickly access help and troubleshooting.
• <b>Exit</b>: Quits NOOBS and reboots the Pi into the OS boot menu.
• <b>Language Selection</b>: Allows you to select the language to be displayed.
• <b>Keyboard Layout Selection</b>: Allows you to select the keyboard layout to be used.
• <b>Display Mode Selection</b>: By default, NOOBS will output over HDMI at your display's preferred resolution, even if no HDMI display is connected. If you do not see any output on your HDMI display or are using the composite output, press 1, 2, 3 or 4 on your keyboard to select HDMI preferred mode, HDMI safe mode, composite PAL mode or composite NTSC mode respectively.

Note that all user settings (language, keyboard layout, display mode) will persist between reboots and will also be automatically passed to the installed OSes. This means that if you can see the NOOBS interface on your display device then you should be able to see the OS CLI/GUI when it boots too!

Setup

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B: display must be connected to HDMI port closest to power jack.

To set up a blank SD card with NOOBS:

• Format an SD card as FAT. See the instructions given below.
  • Your SD card will need to be at least 16GB for Raspberry Pi OS Full, or at least 8GB for all other installs.
  • Consider using NOOBS-Lite with an internet connection if you want to leave more space for operating systems.
• Download and extract the files from the NOOBS zip file. (Windows built-in zip features may have trouble with this file. If so, use another program such as 7zip.)
• Copy the extracted files onto the SD card that you just formatted so that these files are at the root directory of the SD card. Please note that in some cases it may extract the files into a folder; if this is the case, then please copy across the files from inside the folder rather than the folder itself.

On first boot the "RECOVERY" FAT partition will be automatically resized to a minimum and a list of OSes that are available to install will be displayed.

Operating System Choice

NOOBS is available in 2 formats:

• NOOBS Full includes the installation files for Raspberry Pi OS Full and LibreELEC only.
• NOOBS-Lite does not include any Operating Systems at all.

Please note that RISC OS cannot be installed by the NOOBS Full version due to the amount of space taken up by the included Operating Systems.

If you want to install RISC OS, use NOOBS-Lite instead, or change the included operating systems.

OS Network Download

Both versions of NOOBS allow additional Operating Systems to be downloaded from our remote repository. To do this, the Raspberry Pi must be connected to a wired network, or it can connect over Wifi using the Raspberry Pi USB wifi dongle or a Raspberry Pi Model with built-in wifi.

Once connected, the Pi will only show a list of Operating Systems that are appropriate to your Pi Model. If you want to see ALL available OSes, edit the recovery.cmdline file in the root NOOBS directory and append showall to the arguments list.

Wired Networks

If a wired ethernet cable is plugged into the Pi before NOOBS starts, NOOBS will connect via DHCP to our remote download repository and present a list of available Operating Systems that are available for installation.

Wifi Networks

If you have the official Raspberry Pi USB wifi Dongle, or are using the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with built-in wifi, the wifi icon on the NOOBS toolbar will be available. Click on this to select your Wifi SSID network and enter the wifi password.

How to Format an SD card as FAT

For <b>Windows</b> users, we recommend formatting your SD card using the SD Association's Formatting Tool, which can be downloaded from https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ You will need to set "FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT" option to "ON" in the "Options" menu to ensure that the entire SD card volume is formatted - not just a single partition. With the latest SD Association Formatting Tool (V5.0) that option has been removed and is now the default. For more detailed and beginner-friendly formatting instructions, please refer to https://www.raspberrypi.org/quick-start-guide

The SD Association's Formatting Tool is also available for <b>Mac</b> users although the default OSX Disk Utility is also capable of formatting the entire disk (select the SD card volume and choose "Erase" with "MS-DOS" format).

For <b>Linux</b> users we recommend gparted (or the command line version parted). (Update: Norman Dunbar has written up the following formatting instructions for Linux users: http://qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/blog/2013/06/noobs-for-raspberry-pi/ )

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Screenshots

OS Installation

Simply select the checkbox next to each OS you want to install using either a mouse or keyboard (arrow keys to traverse the list, enter to toggle the selected OS's checkbox), then click the "Install" icon (or press "i" on your keyboard) to install the selection. The icons shown on the right of the list indicate whether the OS is being installed from the SD card (SD card icon) or from the online OS repository (Ethernet icon).

^{*NOTE: The list of OSes in this image is indicative only. It will vary according to your Raspberry Pi model and the availability of OSes on our remote download repository.}

Online Help via Web Browser

The built-in Arora web browser allows you to easily get help via the Raspberry Pi Forums (wired network connection required).

Easy Config File Editor

The built-in config file editor allows you to edit the config file of the OS currently highlighted in the OS list. This allows you to easily add license keys to different OS installs through the same interface.

Note that the output mode selected by the user through pressing one of number keys 1 to 4 (for HDMI preferred, HDMI VGA, Composite PAL and Composite NTSC respectively), will be automatically set in the config.txt files of your installed OSes. This means that you shouldn't have to worry about manually changing your display settings to get your installed OS to display correctly on your display device.

Installer Slideshow

An installer slideshow guides you through your first steps with each OS while it installs.

OS Boot Selector

After multiple OSes have been installed, you can select which OS to boot through this selection window that is automatically displayed. NOOBS will remember your choice and boot this OS by default unless a different option has been selected within 10 seconds.

Note that if only one OS is installed then the boot selector will not be displayed and the OS will be automatically booted.

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Advanced Usage (for experts and teachers)

How to Automatically Install an OS

Even if you are using your Pi without a display, you can still use NOOBS to easily install an OS of your choice. To set up NOOBS to automatically and silently (i.e. without requiring any user input) install a specific OS, follow these steps:

1. Copy the OS folder for the OS you want to install into the /os dir (or alternatively delete all other OSes contained in t