Sidney's guide for setting up a pi really fast

README.md

How to set up a fresh Pi SD card real fast

1. Download an OS image from https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/. I like starting with 64 bit lite! It's small and you can always add a desktop later.

2. Plug the SD card into your mac and use diskutil list to find it. Size is a good trick for picking the right one!

3. sudo chown "$(whoami)" /dev/rdiskX (where X is the number of the SD card).

4. xzcat ~/Downloads/2025-10-01-raspios-trixie-arm64-lite.img.xz | dd of=/dev/rdiskX bs=4M

5. Save custom.toml from this gist, then edit it.

• Change hostname to something unique.
• Set the WiFi SSID and password.
• Optionally, change username and password (or remove the password line if you're only going to log in with an SSH key).
• Optionally, uncomment ssh_import_id and change mygithubusername to your github username if you have an SSH key on GitHub, or uncomment and fill in authorized_keys with the contents of ~/.ssh/id_whatever.pub.

6. cp custom.toml /Volumes/bootfs/

Eject the SD card and put it in your Pi. Save the .xz file and custom.toml for next time. That's it ✨

custom.toml

config_version = 1

[system]
hostname = "raspberrypi"

[user]
name = "pi"
password = "raspberry"

[ssh]
# ssh_import_id = "gh:mygithubusername"
# authorized_keys = [ "ssh-rsa ... user@host", ... ]
enabled = true

[wlan]
ssid = "mywifi"
password = "wifipassword"
hidden = false
# https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/Regulatory
country = "US"

[locale]
keymap = "us"
timezone = "America/New_York"