Features
- Compressed images on the fly:
.gz, .bz2, .xz, .zst, plus .zip (incl. ZIP64), .zzz, .tar, .cpio and .pax archives. No need to extract first.
- Raw images:
.iso, .img, .bin, .raw, .dd and the like.
- Verified, synchronized writes: every block can be read back and compared, and all data is physically on the drive when the progress bar reaches 100%.
- Hard to make a mistake: the system disk is kept out of the target list.
- Backups: read a drive back to a raw image, or a ZStandard-compressed one.
- Serial line: send images to microcontrollers and embedded boards.
- Modern GTK interface: header bar, drag and drop, and it follows your light or dark theme.
- 18 languages, detected from your system.
- Small, no dependencies: every parser and decompressor is built in. No telemetry, no ads.
Download
Version 1.0.0:
Linux packages are x86_64. Checksums are on the release page.
The Windows and macOS apps aren't code-signed yet. On Windows, if SmartScreen warns, choose More info → Run anyway. On macOS, after moving the app to Applications, run xattr -cr /Applications/ImageUploader.app once, otherwise macOS reports it as damaged.
Building
You need a C compiler and make.
Linux, modern GTK interface (recommended)
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install build-essential libgtk-3-dev
# optional: lets non-root users write to drives through udisks2
sudo apt install libudisks2-dev
git clone https://github.com/parsamajidi21/ImageUploader.git
cd ImageUploader/src
USE_GTK=1 make
./imageuploader
Without udisks2 the binary is installed setgid disk instead, so your user needs to be allowed to grant that (see Permissions).
Other interfaces and targets
| Command | Result |
|---|
make | Native default: X11 on Linux, GDI on Windows (MinGW), Cocoa on macOS |
USE_GTK=1 make | GTK 3 interface (Linux) |
USE_TUI=1 make | Text interface |
USE_WRONLY=1 make | Simplified, write-only interface |
USE_UNIFONT=1 make | X11 with an embedded font |
make install | Install under /usr |
make package | Portable zip |
make deb | Debian package |
make help | List every option |
Options can be combined, for example USE_WRONLY=1 USE_GTK=1 make clean all deb.
Usage
Writing an image to a drive
- Pick an image: click the folder button, type a path, or drag a file onto the window.
- Pick the target drive. Plugged it in just now? Click the refresh button.
- Click Write.
The format and compression are detected automatically. With Verify on, every block is read back and compared to the image. The buffer size selector sets the chunk size; actual memory use is three times that (compressed, uncompressed and verify buffers).
Creating a backup
- Pick the drive.
- Click Read.
The image is saved to your Desktop (or Downloads, or your home directory) as imageuploader-(date)T(time).dd. With Compress on, it's ZStandard-compressed and gets a .zst suffix. Pass a directory on the command line to save backups there instead.
Permissions
- Linux: with udisks2 nothing is needed. Otherwise the binary needs the setgid
disk bit (sudo chgrp disk imageuploader && sudo chmod g+s imageuploader), or add your user to the disk group. Running it with sudo shouldn't be necessary.
- Windows: right-click
imageuploader.exe and choose Run as administrator.
- macOS: the app re-launches itself with
sudo. If Finder says the app is damaged, remove the quarantine flag with xattr -crv /Applications/ImageUploader.app.
If your drive isn't listed, it may be bigger than the size limit (256 GiB by default, change it with -m) or it may be the system disk.
Command-line flags
| Flag | Description |
|---|
-v, -vv | Verbose output (prints the SHA-256 checksum and average speed at the end) |
-Lxx | Force a language, e.g. -Lde, -Lfr |
-0 … -9 | Buffer size as a power of two MiB (0 = 1 MiB … 9 = 512 MiB) |
-m(gb) | Maximum disk size to list, in GiB |
-a | List all devices, including system disks — be careful |
-f | Force write: always write, even blocks that already match |
-s[baud], -S[baud] | Allow serial ports as targets (-S adds a raspbootin handshake) |
-F(font) | X11 font: a fontconfig name like -F"DejaVu Sans:size=12", or an XLFD core font |
--version | Print the version |
| (directory) | The first non-flag argument is the backup directory |
Flags can be given separately (imageuploader -v -s -2) or together (imageuploader -2vs).
By default each block is read first and only written if it differs, which is easy on slow or wear-sensitive media. -f skips that comparison.
Serial transfers
With -s, images are sent as-is (not decompressed) over the serial line at 115200 baud, 8N1 by default. The client should wait for the first byte, then read with a short timeout (250–500 ms); when the timeout hits, the image is complete.
With -S, a raspbootin handshake is used:
- The client sends
\003\003\003 (Ctrl+C three times).
- ImageUploader sends the image size as 4 bytes, little-endian.
- The client answers
OK or SE (size error).
- On
OK, the image is sent.
Your user needs to be in the dialout or uucp group (depends on the distribution).
Credits
ImageUploader is based on USBImager by bzt, released under the MIT license.
It also includes zlib (Mark Adler), bzip2 (Julian R. Seward), xz (Igor Pavlov and Lasse Collin), zstd (Meta) and libui (Pietro Gagliardi).
License
MIT. See LICENSE.
