Raspberry Pi First Boot and Setup

The first time a freshly flashed Raspberry Pi powers on, a short setup wizard walks through the essential configuration before it's ready to use.

Connecting Everything in the Right Order

  1. Insert the freshly flashed microSD card into the slot on the underside of the board
  2. Connect a monitor using an HDMI cable (check which HDMI port on models with two)
  3. Connect a USB keyboard and mouse
  4. Connect an Ethernet cable now if you're not using Wi-Fi
  5. Connect the power supply last, which turns the board on immediately
Note: Connect the monitor before applying power. Some displays only get detected correctly if they're already plugged in when the Pi starts booting. Also use the official (or an equivalent, properly rated) power supply; underpowered chargers cause random reboots and storage corruption.

The Welcome Wizard

If you didn't preconfigure everything through Raspberry Pi Imager's advanced options, the desktop edition greets you with a setup wizard on first boot. It walks through setting your country, language, and timezone; choosing a keyboard layout; changing the default password (an important security step, since a known default password is an easy target); connecting to a Wi-Fi network; and checking for software updates. Skipping preconfiguration and doing this wizard by hand is perfectly fine for a first Pi with a monitor attached.

Understanding raspi-config

Underneath that friendly wizard is a text-based configuration tool called raspi-config. It's not just for first boot, you can reopen it any time from a terminal to change settings later, whether or not a desktop is even installed. This makes it the standard way to configure a headless, Lite-based installation that never shows the graphical wizard at all.

Opening the Configuration Tool

sudo raspi-config
# Use the arrow keys to move, Enter to select, and Tab to reach <Finish>
# Reboot afterward if prompted, since some changes only take effect on restart
Menu ItemPurpose
1 System OptionsPassword, hostname, boot behaviour (desktop vs console), auto-login
2 Display OptionsResolution and screen blanking on supported OS versions
3 Interface OptionsToggle SSH, VNC, camera, I2C, SPI, and other hardware interfaces
4 Performance OptionsOverclocking and GPU memory split on supported models
5 Localisation OptionsLocale, timezone, keyboard layout, and Wi-Fi country
6 Advanced OptionsFilesystem expansion and other lower-level settings

Filesystem Expansion

The OS image written to the card is only as large as the software it contains, often just a few gigabytes, even on a 32GB card. On first boot, Raspberry Pi OS automatically expands its main partition to use the rest of the available space; if that step is ever skipped or needs redoing, the same option is available under Advanced Options in raspi-config as "Expand Filesystem." Without this step, the extra capacity of a larger card simply goes unused.

Note: Certain changes, such as switching the boot target between desktop and console, or enabling some hardware interfaces, only take effect after a reboot. raspi-config will usually prompt you to restart when this is the case.

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