DD-GUI

A desktop front end for dd: flash, back up, clone and wipe drives.
Linux, Windows and macOS. One file, nothing to install.

Download  ·  Build from source

Features

• Write disk images to USB drives and SD cards
• Back up and clone drives, either sector by sector or used space only
• Wipe drives
• dd is built in, and the exact command is shown before it runs
• The system drive is protected, and every erase needs confirmation

Smart copy

Smart copy reads the file system's allocation data and copies only the blocks in use, so a 64 GB stick holding 9 GB of data makes a 9 GB backup. Backups are saved as .img.zst: DD-GUI skips the free space when writing them back, and zstd -d turns them into a regular raw image.

Supported
File systems	FAT, exFAT, NTFS, ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS, F2FS, swap, APFS, HFS+, ISO 9660, UDF
Partitioning	MBR, GPT, Apple partition map, BSD disklabel, LVM

Other file systems, encrypted volumes and volumes that weren't cleanly unmounted are copied in full.

Supported images

Disk images	ISO, IMG, DMG, VHD, VHDX, VMDK, QCOW2
Compressed	gz, xz, zst, bz2, lz4, lzma, zip
Archives	7z, tar

Download

Get the archive for your system from the latest release.

Platform	File	Requires
Linux x86_64	dd-gui-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	glibc 2.28+ (2018 or newer distributions)
Linux arm64	dd-gui-<version>-linux-arm64.tar.gz	glibc 2.28+
Windows x86_64	dd-gui-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip	Windows 10 or newer
Windows arm64	dd-gui-<version>-windows-arm64.zip	Windows 10 or newer
macOS Apple Silicon	dd-gui-<version>-macos-arm64.zip	macOS 11 or newer

Each download holds one self-contained program. On Linux, extract it and run ./dd-gui.

Writing to a drive needs administrator rights:

• Linux: DD-GUI asks through polkit, or through the tool named in DD_GUI_ELEVATE, such as sudo -A.
• macOS: the system password prompt appears.
• Windows: DD-GUI asks when it starts.

The Windows and macOS builds aren't code-signed:

• Windows: in SmartScreen, choose More info → Run anyway.
• macOS: the first time, right-click the app and choose Open.

Building

Every platform needs Rust 1.93 or newer. Each build script checks the rest, offers to install what's missing, and puts the result in dist/.

Linux

Needs a C compiler. The script installs one through pacman, apt, dnf or zypper if it's missing.

git clone https://github.com/Sir-MmD/dd-gui.git
cd dd-gui
./build.sh            # → dist/dd-gui

macOS

Needs the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install).

git clone https://github.com/Sir-MmD/dd-gui.git
cd dd-gui
./build.command       # → dist/DD-GUI.app, for this Mac's architecture
./build.command --universal   # Apple Silicon and Intel in one app

Windows

Needs the Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload and a Windows SDK. The script installs them if they're missing.

git clone https://github.com/Sir-MmD/dd-gui.git
cd dd-gui
build.bat

The result is dist\dd-gui.exe. You can also double-click build.bat.

Options

• --check runs the tests. On Windows this needs an administrator prompt.
• --clean rebuilds from scratch.
• --noconfirm skips the prompts.

Cross-compiling

The release binaries for Linux are built with cargo-zigbuild against glibc 2.28:

cargo zigbuild --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.2.28
cargo zigbuild --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.2.28

Command line

dd-gui [IMAGE]          open the window, optionally with an image selected
dd-gui dd if=… of=…     run the bundled dd
dd-gui drives           list drives as JSON

Credits

• uutils coreutils for dd (MIT)
• Zstandard (BSD)
• Slint for the user interface (Slint Royalty-free License)
• Inter and JetBrains Mono (SIL Open Font License)
• Lucide icons (ISC)