How to make a custom macOS Recovery (i.e. with custom apps)?

[izzy0242mr]

Does anyone know of a way to do this? I've googled and not found anything helpful.

I have seen a handful of custom recovery partitions (usually for Hackintosh prebuilt installers or modified macOS installers). I'm mostly curious about putting a file browser on a recovery partition so I can boot up and have access to files through a GUI interface rather than Terminal. Linux live discs often can't write (and sometimes can't read) HFS/AFPS formats.

 

[Bigwaff]

Have tried using file URI in Safari?
Ex. file://Volumes/………..

By “access to files”, what do you mean? Even if you had a GUI file browser like Finder in Recovery, you wouldn’t be able to double-click files to launch applications.

 

[!!!]

Just install macOS onto an external drive and install the utilities you want. The problem with the recovery partition is that it doesn't always include the necessary frameworks to run everything.

 

[izzy0242mr]

Just install macOS onto an external drive and install the utilities you want. The problem with the recovery partition is that it doesn't always include the necessary frameworks to run everything.

I want something ultra portable, like a USB flash drive that I can carry on a keychain. In my experience, macOS on a USB drive is a super slow experience.

 

[izzy0242mr]

Have tried using file URI in Safari?
Ex. file://Volumes/………..

By “access to files”, what do you mean? Even if you had a GUI file browser like Finder in Recovery, you wouldn’t be able to double-click files to launch applications.

Hmm…I haven't tried that.

"Access to files" - I mean literally just a file browser that lets me at minimum browse a file directory, and ideally read/write. Basically Finder. Totally fine if I didn't have the ability to launch apps—obviously apps aren't going to work in Recovery mode unless they're specifically set up to do so. But if I could, for example, boot into Recovery, and then browse files with Finder on the internal hard drive (imagine a situation where the Mac crashes and won't boot up and you need to recover files before wiping the disk).

 

[Bigwaff]

"Access to files" - I mean literally just a file browser that lets me at minimum browse a file directory, and ideally read/write.

To “read/write”, you would need to launch application(s) by double-clicking on a file, yes? Otherwise, what purpose would a file browser serve?