Reboot directly from MacOS to Startup Manager? (Init command)

A few days ago, I had a problem to reboot on the recovery-mode (CMD+R) and to also to have access to the startup manager (Option/Alt). None of those key combinaisons would work for me. So after some research, I found out how to boot in any drive without the startup manager.


(Solution 1) Reboot directly onto a USB drive or another partition without the startup manager: You just need the macOS application Boot Manager. Once installed, it appears in the menu bar, just like the image below. You can then select the drive that you want to reboot onto. Boot Manager

Here is a tutorial on how to install it: Boot Manager installation tutorial

Note: At some point, you will need to reboot into the recovery-mode. So you can use the following trick

  1. Open a terminal
  2. Type in:

    sudo nvram recovery-boot-mode=unused

  3. Enter the admin password
  4. Restart the computer. It will automatically reboot into the recovery-mode

(Solution 2) Replace the startup manager: You can replace the startup manager with an application (just like rEFIND) that will ask you to select the drive to boot onto without having to press the "Option/Alt" key when booting up your computer. The app is Next Loader and is from the same dev. The installation tutorial is here.


If you install the free rEFInd boot manager, then you can issue a command to boot directly from MacOS to the rEFInd boot manager screen. However, the default behavior of rEFInd is to appear when the Mac boots. This makes it unnecessary to issue the command asked for in your question.

rEFInd can also be configured to select the default operating system to boot directly from macOS. This can be accomplished using a GUI or CLI.