Etcher 1.0 beta

Etcher is a program that comes as an alternative to using Mac's Disk Utility for burning images to your external storage devices. With its help, you can burn image files to SD cards and USB drives with just a few clicks.

This open source application gives you access to only a few settings which can easily be configured even by a beginner computer user. All you need to do is to select the image file you wish to burn, choose the destination device, and click the "Flash!" button.

The program will display the burning progress in its main window. You can configure the app to automatically eject the connected external device once the burning process is complete.

In my testing, the app immediately burned the selected image to my USB drive. The burning speed was more than 7 MB per second. The only thing that bothered me was that it once failed to detect the connected USB stick. I had to eject and reconnect the device. Still, this happened only once, it could be my Mac's or USB stick's fault.

All in all, Etcher proves to be a reliable solution for burning image files to your external storage devices. Unlike other apps that help you complete the aforementioned task, this utility requires minimum configuration. Plus, it comes without a price tag.