TINU: The bootable macOS installer creation tool - Mac app

[ITzTravelInTime]

ok, so I have noted some small ui misplacements, expect a bug fix update soon

[chemary85]

Awesome and congrats!

 

If you want, i can translate it to Spanish.

 

Thanks for your work!

 

Regards!

[xtddd]

You have done a great job      

[Tusskan]

If you want, I cane help translating to Arabic.

[ITzTravelInTime]

Thank you very much for your appreciation and support, now I should create a list somewhere that allows people to subscribe and join for the future translation work (as I already said it will be done when most of the ui will be finished, now it's far from being finished, because it still lacks a lot of feature I plan to add, like the advanced features section, and also I need to improve the English used in the app to make it more clear to understand and easy to translate)

[ITzTravelInTime]

I can officially announce that I am working to add clover support in my app, I found a way to use a clover pkg with custom settings using some command line commands and by using a plist serialization to generate a config file for the pgk, I am still in the first steps of that and also plist serialization and deserialization are giving me problems, I will keep you updated on that, in the meanwhile I have a new version of the app almost ready that brings a lot of UI imporovemets including a new UI style that you can use, and you can also switch UI style when you want. I will give to you more details on that when I publish it.

[ITzTravelInTime]

New version available that brigs a new style for the graphical interface, using lots of transparent effects and also some modifications from the previous one, you can switch the style of the UI by just using in the menù bar "View->Use transparent style" or alt + s on the keyboard , you can do it when you want.

Also I have done some other optimization and bug fixing to the whole app.

 

For future versions:

I am also working on translations finding an easy way to let you to do that and I am also working on the clover code and the advanced options menu for the app, that will let you to install clover on the installer drive and customize the install media with things like kernelcache and other boot files replacement.

 

Here is a link with the download page of this version: 1.1 PUBLIC (24)

[xtddd]

great

[luky35]

He tested with Sierra 10.13.1 and everything went great.

 

Thank you, the author!

[ITzTravelInTime]

He tested with Sierra 10.13.1 and everything went great.

 

Thank you, the author!

 

Yes, I forgot to say that I have also tested it with 10.13.1 and it works great , it should also work with any future release of the macOS installer app that includes the createinstallmedia executable, so if you can see it into the screen that asks you to chose a macOS installer app it should work with TINU, the oldest installer which is supported is the mavericks installer app.

 

So TINU is quite flexible for the versions of Mac you can use and also it doesn't need to be updated to support newer versions of Mac because the createinstallmedia is always the same.

[eSaF]

Just made a test disk using this app to install macOS 10.13.1 - So far not a bad little app, quite a smooth and understandable transition step by step. A coupling with Clover would definitely make it a 100% must have app for newbies venturing into Hackintosh installation. Well done Sir, looking forward to future developement.

[ITzTravelInTime]

Just made a test disk using this app to install macOS 10.13.1 - So far not a bad little app, quite a smooth and understandable transition step by step. A coupling with Clover would definitely make it a 100% must have app for newbies venturing into Hackintosh installation. Well done Sir, looking forward to future developement.

Thank you for your appreciation, I am working to integrate clover support, the app will automatically download the latest clover installer (or when you are offline it will ask to you to open a clover installer) and let you chose the install options like in the clover pkg installer and then it will install it on the target drive, but I am having problems passing parameters to the clover installer in my testing code , so I don't think it's something you will see into the app soon because I need to work on that, but I will do my best to made it, but I already have a way to integrate other features in future updates, so you will not miss new features in the next versions of app

[ITzTravelInTime]

other update: I have modified the first post of this thread to add new screenshots of the new graphics style and also to update the description, I am also looking for a very simple tutorial to link in that post to let people to get stated, so I invite all of you that wants, to create a tutorial about how to use tinu to create a Mac OS installer and then send it to me, the prize is that the best tutorial will be linked as official tutorial in the first post, good luck, in the meanwhile I am working on the app, I am figuring out how to insert the new features into the app's interface.

[IUTniun]

Working flawlessly,  straightforward and easy to understand ,tested with Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6,

 

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Working flawlessly,  straightforward and easy to understand ,tested with Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6,

 

Thank you very much for appreciating my work, and here is just a spoiler for the next version:

 

it will extract the icon from your installer app and apply it to the drive you chosen, here is a little demonstration done with my debug version of TINU and Mac OS X mavericks

 

(I have tested from mavericks and newer version if you ask, no hope to let it to work with previous versions, unless I rework from 0 the code that creates the usb installer to use the older vanilla method)

[LoBlanc]

Working marvelously on my Asus laptop by installing HighSierra. Easy, easy and powerful tool. Thank you very much !

[ITzTravelInTime]

Another update for you, the work on the new release of TINU is going really well, i have added almost all the features i have planned to introduce in this version and for now they seems to work, i have to send some new screens to the designer to be reviewed, and also i have to work on improving the code, make the new features to work more efficiently and more stable, so you still have to wait for the new update, but it will add more features and control to the entire app, and also some bug fix.

 

Today's fun fact, i have bought recently a macbook pro 2017 (got it with an huge discount, i need it as support machine for my hackintoshes and also to continue to work on my projects when i am not at home) and i tried to use tinu on it, the interface style changing system started to give me some issues with the latest build, so i have to still work on it (sorry if you can't see the emojis on some machines/browasers)

 

As always i will keep you updated guys 

[eSaF]

I am a huge fan already and can't wait for the final release - Good luck and looking forward to all future updates 

[ITzTravelInTime]

ok, i have started working on the wiki, that's the FAQs page: https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/TINU/wiki/FAQs

[IUTniun]

Thank you for all your hard work ,waiting for future updates.

[ITzTravelInTime]

ok, i am just working on an interesting new feature that will appear in the next release, it will allow you to use TINU, inside the macOS installer to install macOS, the cool thing is that it will also allow you to easily install without upgrading to apfs and also it will offer some other small customization as well, i am still writing the code for that and testing it, but for now it seems to work, and it will be available  only when you open TINU fro  the macOS installer, beacuse it does require the --volume argument of the startosinstall executable to let TINU to work properly with it, i still have a lot of work to do for that, but first results looks quite good, i used it today to upgrade my secondary hackintosh from 10.13.0 to 10.13.1 using the install app downloaded from the mac app store, it does work with clean install as well  i just tried it on a partition of my ssd, it should work on real macs as well, because it does not uses anything specific to hackintosh for that.

 

To also allow you to use this feature, i included an option that will automatically copy the TINU app in the finished macOS install media, you can open it with terminal with a short command, because i can't edit the base system created with createinstallmedia i can't put any button into the installer interface to let you to open TINU more easily.

 

And also as you will see there are features of TINU available only when you open it from the macOS installer.

 

Speaking of other things, in the web i have seen the root user authentication bug in high sierra, but tinu, because it does uses a double authentication system is not vulnerable, at least not entirely, because the second authentication is all custom made by me and uses sudo to check if the user password is correct and it will not allow to switch user, and this is true for all the releases of TINU that you have seen right now

[ITzTravelInTime]

ok, for Italian users i have prepared a video that explains how to create an usb installer with tinu and put clover on it, i don't know if i will do an English version, because i am not that great when it comes to speaking English in person.

 

If you like to create you own video about this app, it'd appreciate that, and the best ones will be linked in the first post of this thread and maybe in other places.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

just to keep you updated, i am working on fixes and improvements for the next version of the app, for example today i worked to improve the code that stops the creation process, because it has some ugly bugs, i have also worked on improvements for all the ui, and for small things like alerts messages and errors detecting during the creation process, and remember that TINU even in the current public version is designed to report you all the errors that you can have from the createinstallmedia process.

 

For the clover i have tried something to fix the plist serialization problem i am having, the issue is that i have to modify values of an plist xml encoded string, but i am having problems in replacing just some values without touching some others and while maintaining the organization the structure of the encoded string (i am also using system apis to deal with plist serialization and deserialization, so i get arrays and dictionaries instead of an encoded string to work with, and this is better for me), at the time being i can download clover automatically from the app or ask to open a clover pkg and then get the options from it, and show them to the user, but because of the serialization problem the installer refuses to apply the settings i specify and instead it goes with default clover pkg settings, that's all about that problem, but for now i am keeping this code outside of the app just to create something that works first before putting it into the app, i have created a little command line tool in swift 3 with the testing, and very disorganized testing code i have (it will be re written and organized better when i will have something that works)

 

Of corse if you know other ways to install clover using the pkg donwloaded from internet and command line with custom options let me know, for now i am just trying with the installer command and [-showChoicesXML] [-applyChoiceChangesXML <pathToFile>] args that should make me able to get options for clover installer and install clover with such options

[ITzTravelInTime]

Just to keep you updated, i worked on a UI redesign for some of the screens, and new screens have been added to the app, just to make it more simple and to look better, i have also fixed some problems you may have experienced with the actual public version.

 

I am working also that feature that allows you to install mac os if you open TINU from the usb installer created with this app, in fact since the first versions of TINU i have created, i have supported using it from the mac bootable installer or recovery, and also the support for the startosinstall is present into the source code of actual versions, but for the next version it's more optimized and works better, you will be also able to chose if you want to keep automatic apfs conversion enabled or disabled

 

If you want to try using TINU from the installer, first of all create your bootable media with tinu (or the createinstallmedia method from terminal, it's the same thing) and then copy on the root of the finished drive a copy of the app, then boot the bootable media and once it's booted open the terminal and write:

"/Volumes/Image Volume/TINU.app/Contents/MacOS/TINU"

press enter and the app will be opened, so you can use this app from the recovery and you can do things like create another installer if you do not have a working macOS installation, and by using this app, in this way, in the future releases, it will allow you to install macOS with more customization and options.

 

For people who wants spoilers here is a spoiler of the first 2 screens of the app that you will see when you open it (when using the app from your mac desktop and when using it from the recovery/installer) that i have introduced for the next version, but they are still work in progress, maybe things like fonts and icons will change, and i want also to change the icon of the app with something that explains better what this app does.

[ITzTravelInTime]

Quick Christmas update:

 

At the end i decided to try to do an english video about my app, i have already recorded everything yesterday from my macbook, and it will be published before the end of the year.

 

For the app i am continuing with the redesign and the optimization process, and also to fix some bugs, as i told to you, for me getting this app to work well and without bugs or stability issues is very important. I have also introduced other features that where missing, like opening the macOS installer app from a custom location.

 

And also merry Christmas to all the people here!