How To Open Dmg File In Macbook

Non-Macintosh systems may access DMG files and extract or convert them to ISO image files for burning. Several applications are designed to offer this solution for Windows systems. 7-Zip and DMG Extractor are the best options to open DMG file on Windows because they are compatible with the most DMG variations. For Linux a built-in 'cdrecord. How to Open a DMG File in Windows Martin Hendrikx Updated April 2, 2018, 10:29pm EDT Whether you are an avid Mac programmer using a Windows PC, or you just found a DMG file on your Windows machine, it can be useful to know what it is and how to open it.

File TypeApple Disk Image

DeveloperApple
Popularity
CategoryDisk Image Files
FormatBinary

What is a DMG file?

A DMG file is a mountable disk image used to distribute software to the macOS operating system. The file is typically downloaded from the Internet by a Mac user, then double-clicked to install an application on the computer.

Today, software developers typically build and distribute applications for Mac users as DMG, .APP, or .PKG files. DMG files are especially common since their contents can be verified upon installation to ensure they have not been tampered with and they can also be compressed to reduce the size of the installer.

When a Mac user downloads a DMG file, he can simply double-click it to open it with the DiskImageMounter utility that comes with macOS. When the DMG file is opened, it mounts a virtual disk on the desktop and in an Apple Finder window as if it was a CD or a USB flash drive that was just inserted into the computer.

In the Finder window, the Mac user can double-click the program icon, which is an APP file, to run the app. Or the Mac user can drag the program icon to the 'Applications' folder icon to move it to the 'Applications' directory in macOS.

After the software stored in the DMG file is installed, the DMG file is no longer needed. Therefore, DMG files can be deleted after installing the software.

While DMG files are Mac-specific and not intended for use in Windows, there are several Windows programs that can extract their contents or convert them to other formats. Some programs include 7-Zip, PeaZip, and DMG2IMG.

NOTE: The DMG format replaced the .IMG file format, which was previously used in Mac OS Classic.

Unknown files on your Mac? Try File Viewer.
Programs that open DMG files
Mac
Apple Disk Utility
Roxio Toast 18
Incredible Bee Archiver
Catacombae HFSExplorer
Windows
File Viewer Plus
7-Zip
PeaZip
Catacombae HFSExplorer
Reincubate DMG Extractor
DMG2IMG
DMG2ISO
Linux
Catacombae HFSExplorer

DMG is a file of Apple Disk Image. The Apple Disk Images are disk image files commonly used by the Mac OS X operating system. When opened, an Apple disk image is 'mounted' as a volume within the Finder. Several Apple proprietary disk image formats can be used to create these images, including the Universal Disk Image Format (UDIF) and the New Disk Image Format (NDIF). Apple disk images usually have the .dmg file extension.

Apple disk images allow secure password protection as well as file compression and hence serves both security and file distribution functions; they are most commonly used to distribute software over the Internet.

Universal Disk Image Format (UDIF) is the native disk image format for Mac OS X. Disk images in this format typically have a .dmg extension. New Disk Image Format (NDIF) was the previous default disk image format in Mac OS 9, and disk images with this format generally have a .img (not to be confused with raw .img disk image files) or .smi file extension. Files with the .smi extension are actually applications that mount an embedded disk image, thus a 'Self Mounting Image', and are intended only for Mac OS 9 and earlier. A previous version of the format, intended only for floppy disk images, is usually referred to as 'Disk Copy 4.2' format, after the version of the Disk Copy utility that was used to handle these images. A similar format that supported compression of floppy disk images is called DART. Apple disk image files are published with a MIME type of application/x-apple-diskimage.

Different file systems can be contained inside these disk images, and there is also support for creating hybrid optical media images that contain multiple file systems. Some of the file systems supported include Hierarchical File System (HFS), HFS Plus, File Allocation Table (FAT), ISO9660 and Universal Disk Format (UDF).

Open/Extract DMG File on Windows

Easy 7-Zip opens/extracts DMG file easily on Windows. The Easy 7-Zip was developed based on 7-Zip. 7-Zip is a famous open source file archiver. The Easy 7-Zip is an easy-to-use version of 7-Zip. The open source freeware keeps all features of 7-Zip and adds a few useful features that makes the software more user-friendly.

Easy 7-Zip works on Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/2008/2003/XP/2000 (both 32-bit and 64-bit compatible).

  1. Free Download Easy 7-Zip
  2. Install Easy 7-Zip by step-by-step instructions
  3. The installation will associate DMG with Easy 7-Zip automatically
  4. Double-click on DMG file to open DMG file with Easy 7-Zip

  5. You will see files or folders within the DMG file then, click button Extract to extract the DMG file.
  6. Alternatively, Right-click on DMG file on Windows Explorer

  7. And then, choose Extract files..., Extract Here, or Extract to 'folder' to extract the DMG file.
  8. Done

Easy 7-Zip Download Links:

You can install and use other alternative freeware that opens/extracts DMG file without burning the DMG file to disc. For example:

Dmg
  • Free DMG Extractor
  • HFSExplorer
  • PeaZip

Open/Extract DMG File on Mac

B1 Free Archiver opens/extracts DMG file on Mac. B1 Free Archiver is a free software for creating archive folder and extracting archive file. B1 Archiver works on all platforms - Windows, Linux, Mac and Android. The freeware supports most popular formats including DMG.

B1 Free Archiver is compatible with:

  • Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks
  • Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
  • Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Alternative freeware that opens/extracts DMG file on Mac.

  • Apple Disk Utility
  • Keka
  • GUI Tar

Open/Extract DMG File on Linux

You can use command mount to mount DMG file as a virtual drive.

First, you must login as a root user, and then create a directory for DMG image

# mkdir -p /mnt/macimage

Use mount command as follows to mount DMG file called image.dmg:

# mount -o loop -t hfsplus image.dmg /mnt/macimage

If the DMG is HFS file system, use:

# mount -o loop -t hfs image.dmg /mnt/macimage

Change directory to list files stored inside an DMG image:

# cd /mnt/macimage
# ls -l

Unmount the DMG image, type:

How To Open Dmg File In Macbook 2017

# umount /mnt/macimage

How To Open .dmg File On Windows

Alternatively, you can use p7zip to extract the DMG file. p7zip is the Unix command-line port of 7-Zip, a file archiver that archives with high compression ratios.

Magiciso

Install p7zip-full on CentOS and Fedora

How To Open Dmg Files In Macbook Pro

# yum install p7zip-full

Install p7zip-full on Debian and Ubuntu

How To Open Dmg File In Macbook Pro

$ sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

List directories and files in DMG file

$ 7z l image.dmg

Extract DMG file on Linux

How To Open Dmg With Mac

$ 7z x image.dmg

How To Open Dmg File In Macbook Air

Copyright © 2013-2017 James Hoo All rights reserved.

Comments are closed.