Step 4. Double-click to open Disk Utility in the Utilities window to open it. Step 3. Double-click 'Utilities' in the Applications window. On the Apple menu, click 'Go' and select 'Applications'. Connect the USB or external hard drive to your Mac computer. You can try the following steps to format USB or external hard drive for Mac with Disk Utility on Mac:

Format USB or External Hard Drive for Mac Using Mac Disk Utilityĭisk Utility offers users similar features in the disk management tool, such as to create, delete, resize, merge and format partitions.

If you want to format USB on your Windows computer and make it usable on Mac, try Method 3.

If you want to directly format the USB on your Mac computer, follow Method 1 and Method 2.

So how do I format a USB stick on a Mac computer? Here, we'll show you how to format your USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac usage. Format USB Drive for Mac on Mac/Windows Computers

If you tend to use it as a Time Machine backup disk, format it as Mac OS Extended Journaled.

If it's larger than 64GB, set its file system as exFAT.

If the USB drive is less than 64GB, set it as FAT32.

So how to set a suitable format for your USB flash drive or external USB drive? Here are our suggestions: Usually, both APFS and Mac OS Extended file systems are mostly used on Mac hard drives, while the FAT/FAT32 and exFAT are common formats for external storage devices.

FAT32 and ExFAT: Compatible with both Windows and macOS.

Mac OS Extended: Used by macOS 10.12 or earlier.

Apple File System - APFS: Used by macOS 10.13 or later.

Here is a list of macOS supported file systems： Note that Windows uses NTFS but Mac can't write files to volumes with NTFS format. Set a Suitable File System for USB or External USB Drive on Mac

To prepare a USB flash drive ready for Mac on a Windows computer, you can try the third-party format software.Īfter picking the right USB format tool, you can now move to the next guide and decide which format that you should set for the USB flash drive or external hard drive. The terminal is far more complex for beginners. To format a USB flash drive on Mac, Disk Utility is better a better choice. So how to select a suitable tool to format your USB flash drive or external hard drive for Mac? For a quick guide, read the tips here:

Mac os format hard drive