If you want to use your USB stick with an Apple Mac, you will need to restart or power-on the Mac with the USB stick inserted while the Option/alt (⌥) key is pressed. Create A Bootable USB for Windows, Linux and Mac OS There are many reasons why you need a bootable USB drivers, the most important thing is that if you cannot start your PC by yourself due to a virus, serious system failure, damaged hard drive, or partition issues, then you have to reinstall system. The Startup Manager scans and lists the drives that are connected and bootable. When your Mac restarts, press and hold the Option key till “Startup Manager” opens. Follow the below process to boot your Mac from bootable USB: Insert the bootable USB installer drive and go to “Apple Menu Restart”.
We’re demonstrating this using Ubuntu 14.10 “Yakkety Yak”, on a MacBook Air running the latest version of macOS Sierra. To live boot into Linux on Mac, you will first have to create a Live USB for the distro you want.
