rEFInd

rEFInd is a fork of the rEFIt boot manager. Like rEFIt, rEFInd can auto-detect your installed EFI boot loaders and it presents a pretty GUI menu of boot options. rEFInd goes beyond rEFIt in that rEFInd better handles systems with many boot loaders, gives better control over the boot loader search process, and provides the ability for users to define their own boot loader entries.

Features

Support for EFI 1.x and UEFI 2.x computers
Support for Mac and PC platforms
Graphical and text-mode boot selector
Auto-detection of available EFI boot loaders
Directly launch Linux 3.3.0 and later kernels with EFI stub loader support
Maintenance-free Linux kernel updates -- boot-time auto-detection means that no configuration file changes are needed after a kernel update
Manually edit boot-time options
Launch EFI programs such as an EFI shell (available from third parties)
Launch OS X and Windows recovery tools
Reboot into the firmware setup utility (on some UEFIs)
Try before installation via a CD-R or USB flash drive image
Secure Boot support (requires separate shim or PreLoader program)
Includes EFI drivers for ext2/3fs, ext4fs, ReiserFS, Btrfs, HFS+, NTFS, and ISO-9660

Project Samples

The rEFInd main menu shows your OSes graphically

rEFInd supports themes to alter its appearance

For those who prefer a text-only display, rEFInd offers one.

rEFInd generates submenus for Linux kernels and OS X boot loaders.

You can edit your boot options with rEFInd

Project Activity

See All Activity >

License

BSD License, GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)

Follow rEFInd

rEFInd Web Site

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User Reviews

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phuqoan Posted 2025-10-05

thank for your hard work.
itachi-re Posted 2025-08-14

great work , need more work because every time it needs to edit to boot into updated kernels on opensuse
brvlabs Posted 2023-11-01

ok
zahars Posted 2022-11-26

Awesome work
dennis2718 Posted 2022-05-24

Really happy it worked as described. The documentation is outstanding. Very helpful in understanding what going with the Mac and SIP. BTW I was able to install from a flash drive without having take an extra step is altering SIP. And it provides boot options both bootable option (I have a backup) plus Recovery Mode. Now Linux install is next Thanks

Additional Project Details

Awards

Dec 2015

Operating Systems

Linux, Mac, Windows

Languages

English

Intended Audience

End Users/Desktop

User Interface

Console/Terminal, Framebuffer

Programming Language

Related Categories

C Boot Software

Registered

2012-03-13

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