Installing umbrelOS on Raspberry Pi

umbrelOS runs on a Raspberry Pi 5. See Running umbrelOS on your own hardware for what to expect.

For the best experience, we recommend installing directly onto an NVMe or USB drive rather than a microSD card.

What you'll need

• Raspberry Pi 5
• Official Raspberry Pi power supply
• Ethernet cable
• NVMe drive with a compatible HAT, or a USB drive
• A computer to flash the image

Install umbrelOS

1. Download the latest umbrelOS image for Raspberry Pi.
2. Download and install Balena Etcher or Raspberry Pi Imager on your computer.
3. Connect your NVMe or USB drive to your computer (use a USB adapter for NVMe drives).
4. Open Balena Etcher, select the umbrelOS image, select your drive, and flash it.
5. Safely eject the drive from your computer.

Boot your Raspberry Pi

1. Attach the flashed drive to your Raspberry Pi 5.
2. Remove any microSD cards — otherwise the Pi may boot from the card instead.
3. Connect an ethernet cable to your Pi and your router.
4. Connect the official power supply to power on.
5. Wait a few minutes for the first boot to complete, then open http://umbrel.local in your browser.

See Connecting to your Umbrel if you need help accessing it.

Notes

• Early Pi 5 models may need a bootloader update to support NVMe booting. See the Raspberry Pi documentation for instructions.
• NVMe compatibility varies by HAT — check that your drive is compatible before purchasing.
• Always use the official power supply. Third-party supplies can cause stability issues.
• Storage Manager and FailSafe aren't available on Raspberry Pi. umbrelOS runs from the drive you flashed and stores your apps and data on it.

Why not microSD?

You can flash umbrelOS onto a microSD card and use an external SSD for storage, but we don't recommend it. microSD cards have a limited number of write cycles and degrade faster, leading to lower performance and reliability over time.