Kali Linux on SD card not showing in boot loader

Solution 1:

The most common way to fix this issue is to go to the Mac Terminal and type in the following:

First, type diskutil list. Find the Kali Linux bootable SD and find the identifier of the EFI partition. This will look something like disk2s1. Once you have that, type sudo diskutil mount disk2s1. Once it is mounted, go to Finder and press Command + Shift + G and type in /Volumes/EFI. Once you are in there, double click on the EFI folder, double click on the Boot folder, and rename grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi. Then, in Terminal, type diskutil unmount EFI. Then restart into the Boot Manager and see if you can find your Kali SD. It should appear as "EFI Boot".

You can also replace the icon of the Kali SD. First, make sure the image you want is in the .icns file format. Then go to the Mac Terminal and type sudo diskutil mount diskidentifier. Replace diskidentifier with the disk identifier from before. Then, type cd /Volumes/EFI and rm .VolumeIcon.icns. Then, type cp /path/to/image.icns /Volumes/EFI/.VolumeIcon.icns. Then, type diskutil unmount EFI.

The Kali Linux installer may not name the EFI partition EFI by default. If that is the case, you will need to use NO\ NAME instead. In the case that neither of those names work, use the disk identifier that you got previously.

Here is an image of what you might see in the EFI partition if it was called NO NAME. You can ignore all the contents of that partition except those in the EFI folder.

Now, your Kali Linux SD will work on any Intel Based, and maybe even an Apple Silicon based Mac.

Make sure you follow each step carefully or else you may end up ruining the SD and needing to erase it.

Good luck!