Raspberry Pi Imager, a tool that helps users easily write OS images to an SD card for booting a Raspberry Pi, has just released version 2.0.3, now available for download.
A major highlight is enhanced performance visibility during image writing. Raspberry Pi Imager can now detect bottlenecks in real time and clearly indicate whether operations are limited by network speed, decompression, or storage writes.
A detailed timing breakdown has also been added, making it easier to analyze throughput and diagnose slow flashes. When direct I/O is enabled, periodic sync operations are skipped to improve write performance, while async I/O support has been expanded and refined across platforms.
On the networking reliability side, the application now monitors connectivity changes on all platforms and automatically retries fetching operating system lists when a connection is restored.
New curl-based components improve error handling and network configuration, including better support for AppImage environments on Linux, where CA certificate paths may be non-standard. File-based repositories are now supported through the file:// protocol, simplifying local testing and development workflows.
Custom operating system repositories receive several security and usability enhancements. A new rpi-imager:// URI scheme allows deep-linking directly to third-party repositories, while .rpi-imager-manifest files are now registered system-wide on Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Drive handling has also been strengthened. Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.3 improves the detection of counterfeit or faulty storage devices that can hang during I/O operations and introduces timeouts for critical actions such as discards and end-of-device writes. Advanced users can enable a debug option to skip problematic end-of-device operations.
On Windows, support has been added for NVMe over Fabrics devices, while Linux benefits from better bus type recognition, drive filtering, and system identification logic.
Several user interface refinements also landed in this release. Language selection now persists correctly across sessions, the main window indicates offline status when applicable, and text wrapping and marquee scrolling have been improved throughout the interface. Plus, debug dialogs now scale more appropriately with window size, improving usability on smaller displays.
Customization and automation workflows have also been refined. Wi-Fi configuration for open networks now correctly supports key_mgmt=NONE, cloud-init user data, and improved network configuration generation, and a new initFormat parameter has been added to the CLI customization API.
On Windows, the installer and uninstaller have been updated to detect existing installations better and to clean up legacy directories and registry entries left behind by older versions. The command-line interface sees several fixes as well, including clearer error messages when run without sufficient privileges and improved terminal compatibility through ANSI escape sequence support.
Finally, the release also resolves numerous bugs across async write handling, unmount logic, permissions dialogs, repository display, translation timing, and macOS build configuration. Internationalisation has been updated with refreshed translations for several languages, alongside new error messages.
Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.3 is available now for Raspberry Pi OS, Windows, macOS, and Linux. For more details, visit the changelog. You can grab the latest version from the official Raspberry Pi website or download the AppImage from the project’s GitHub repo.
