It will also download Apple’s Boot Camp drivers for the hardware Apple includes with its Mac, help you partition the Mac’s storage, and then start the Windows install process.Īfter the USB-based install disk is created-this disk will also include a Boot Camp folder with those drivers-you’re asked to determine how to partition the disk. The easiest way is with OS X’s handy Spotlight Search feature: Type COMMAND + SPACE and then boot camp to find the Boot Camp Assistant app.īoot Camp Assistant is a wizard-based application that will create a Windows-based install disk using the Windows 10 ISO you already downloaded and a USB flash drive (4 GB or bigger, depending on the version of Windows). Install anything you find there before continuing. In my case, I ended up wiping out the Mac and reinstalling from scratch, so space wasn’t much of an issue: my MacBook Air has 256 GB of storage.Īll set? Actually installing Windows 10 with Boot Camp couldn’t be much easier, though this process will take some time and you will want to optimize things a bit after you’re done.įirst, make sure your Mac is up to date: open the Mac App Store and navigate to Updates to see whether there are any pending system updates. This situation is further muddled by the fact that most users will have of course already filled up their Mac’s storage with data and apps, which means there will be less space for Windows. As I noted in Windows 10 + Mac: Introduction, with Boot Camp you will want as much storage space as you can afford, since you’ll be dividing the Mac’s internal storage between OS X and Windows 10.
(The Boot Camp software is included with OS X.)
You need a modern Mac-see the list in Apple Adds Windows 10 Support to Boot Camp-running the latest version of OS X, Yosemite, or the in-beta next release, El Capitan. You must own a copy of Windows 10-though you could of course install the OS and not activate it, just for testing purposes-and you can obtain the ISO installer that Boot Camp expects from the Windows web site. But this guide will get you as close as possible to an optimal configuration.īefore you can even get started, you need to meet the minimum requirements: In this post, I’ll explain how you can configure your Mac to dual-boot using Boot Camp as optimally as is possible.Īnd to be clear, the key part of that sentence is “as is possible.” For a variety of reasons-especialy that Apple’s Mac-specific drivers are lackluster and usually outdated, impacting day-to-day usage, battery life, and performance-Windows will never truly be “optimal” on any Mac. There are two main options for installing Windows 10 on a Mac: Apple’s Boot Camp, which lets you configure your Mac to dual-boot between Windows and OS X, or a virtualization solution like Parallels.