Raspberry Pi OS has a new way to set the Wi-Fi network name and password, SSH access, and other options while you install it. The latest update switched to cloud-init, so setting up a Pi from scratch is more like other Linux systems.
When you install Raspberry Pi OS to an SD card or other storage media, you can configure some system settings that will apply on the first boot. For example, you can save your Wi-Fi's network name and password and enable remote access, so your Pi will be ready for remote access as soon as the install is complete. It has been a great feature over the years, especially as theRaspberry Pi Imager gained the ability to write those configuration files.
Raspberry Pi OS switched to a new Debian 13 'Trixie' foundationback in October, and as part of that upgrade, cloud-init is now used for initial boot configuration. If you're not familiar with it,cloud-init is a cross-platform tool created by Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu Linux) for setting up networking, SSH keys, packages, and other features in new installations. It's primarily intended for virtual machines and cloud servers—hence the name—but now Raspberry Pi uses it as well.
The Raspberry Pi team just published a blog post with more technical details. New installations of Raspberry Pi OS have three new files on the FAT32 boot partition: meta-data, network-config, and user-data. The user-data file is where you can set up SSH access, user accounts, the hostname, the active time zone, USB gadget mode, and other options. The network-config file is where your Wi-Fi network details are stored, and the meta-data file is not intended for manual editing.
The main benefit to this update is portability and standardization. If you already know how to use cloud-init, now you know how to set up a Raspberry Pi, minus the handful of Pi-specific options like enabling the SPI interface or USB gadget mode. You also now have the option to use Netplan configuration files, which is another common standard in the Linux ecosystem.
Raspberry Pi Imager just got a big update
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has long offered an official flashing tool in the form of the Raspberry Pi Imager, which lets you install an operating system onto an SD card for use on your tiny Raspberry Pi board. Now, with version 2.0, it has been completely overhauled.
The blog post explained, "With cloud-init and Netplan now integrated into Raspberry Pi OS, first-boot provisioning becomes far more powerful, repeatable, and portable across different setups. Whether you’re configuring a single device or preparing dozens of Raspberry Pis for a classroom, a lab, or an IoT deployment, these new tools make it easy to define everything up front — users, networking, interfaces, and more — before the system even powers on."
Finally, this change shouldn't break any existing tools for setting up a Raspberry Pi, like old versions of Raspberry Pi Imager. The old script format still works, at least for now. The new Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 update generates cloud-init files by default, and you can write them yourself with simple YAML-format text files.
You can learn more about the cloud-init configuration options fromthe project's official documentation, which hasa section for Raspberry Pi-specific options.
Source:Raspberry Pi
