Raspberry Pi Imager 1.9.4 is now out, marking the first official release in its 1.9.x series. This application, for anyone new to it, is a tool from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It first came out in March 2020. Its main job is to make getting an operating system onto a microSD card or USB drive for any Raspberry Pi computer super simple, even if you hate the command line. It handles downloading selected OS images and writing them correctly, cutting out several manual steps that used to trip people up, like finding the right image version or using complicated disk utility tools.
This version brings solid user interface improvements for a smoother experience, involving internal tweaks that contribute to a more polished feel. Much work went into global accessibility, adding new Korean and Georgian translations. Updates also cover Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, and many others. Naturally, a good number of bugs got squashed, including a fix for tricky long filename issues on Windows and an issue with the Escape key in the options popup.
Changes specific to operating systems are also clear. Windows users get an installer using Inno Setup. Its program files, installer, and uninstaller are now signed for better Windows security. For macOS, .app file naming in .dmg packages is fixed, and building the software is more reliable. Linux users can now hide system drives from the destination list, a great way to prevent accidentally wiping your main computer drives. The Linux AppImage also disables Wayland support by default.
The full list of changes is outlined below:
- Fixed minor errors in Simplified Chinese translation
- Updated translations for German, Catalan, Spanish, Slovak, Portuguese, Hebrew, Traditional Chinese, Italian, Korean, and Georgian
- Explicitly added
--treetolsblkto hide partitions from the top-level output - CMake now displays the version as v1.9.1
- Added support for quiet uninstallation on Windows
- Applied regex to match SSH public keys during OS customization
- Updated dependencies:
- libarchive (3.7.4 → 3.7.7 → 3.8.0)
- zlib (removed preconfigured header → updated to 1.4.1.1)
- cURL (8.8 → 8.11.0 → 8.13.0)
- nghttp2 (updated to 1.65.0)
- zstd (updated to 1.5.7)
- xz/liblzma (updated to 5.8.1)
- Windows-specific updates:
- Switched to Inno Setup for the installer
- Added code signing for binaries, installer, and uninstaller
- Enabled administrator privileges and NSIS removal support
- Fixed a bug causing incorrect saving of long filenames
- macOS-specific updates:
- Fixed
.appnaming in.dmgpackages - Improved build reliability and copyright
- Fixed
- Linux-specific updates:
- System drives are now hidden in destination popup
- Wayland support disabled in AppImage
- General UI/UX improvements:
- Fixed
OptionsPopupnot handling the Esc key - Improved QML code structure, accessibility, and linting
- Made options popup modal
- Split main UI into component files
- Added a
Stylesingleton andImCloseButtoncomponent
- Fixed
- Internationalization (i18n):
- Made "Recommended" OS string translatable
- Made "gigabytes" translatable
- Packaging improvements:
- Custom AppImage build script with Qt detection
- Custom Qt build script with unprivileged mode
- Qt 6.9.0 included
- Dependencies migrated to FetchContent system
- Build system:
- CMake version bumped to 3.22
- Various improvements and hardening applied
- Removed "Show password" checkbox in OS customization settings
- Reverted unneeded changes in long filename size calculation
- Internal refactoring and performance improvements in download and extract operations
- Added support for more archive formats via libarchive
Lastly, it's worth noting that the system requirements have changed since version 1.9.0: macOS users will need version 11 or later; Windows users, Windows 10 or newer; Ubuntu users, version 22.04 or newer; and Debian users, Bookworm or later.
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