Ventoy is a free and open source application, dedicated to creating installation media for operating systems or other types of software. It has just been renewed with a new version that confirms that it is one of the best in its segment.

We recently had the release of Rufus 4.4, and now comes the refresh of another of the most used for creation self-booting external drives on optical media or USB storage. Both have the same goal, to facilitate system installation, software testing and also troubleshooting.

If Rufus is – in our opinion – unbeatable when it comes to working with Windows images, The Ventoy is an excellent all-in-one for everything else. This is probably best when creating multiple bootable media with multiple operating systems. It also works great for installing Windows or other operating systems over a network (PXE).

Ventoy is multi-platform, supports all types of architectures (x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI and ARM64 UEFI) and can handle practically any system except macOS. It also allows you to choose MBR or GPT file format, enable Secure Boot support, and bypass the official Windows 11 requirements to install it on unsupported PCs.

As for images, it supports the main ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD/EFI formats and its ease of use is evident. The tool formats and prepares the USB drive for use, and you can add the image or images you want by simply dragging and dropping.

The latest release added support for FreeBSD version 14.0, fixed boot issues, fixed several Linux-specific bugs, and more. Ventoy is available for Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Unix, other systems and as a LiveCD image. The developer says he stole more than 1,100 image files.

You can get the app from its official website or from its GitHub repository. Another one of those essential apps that shouldn’t be missing from your system installation/maintenance toolkit.