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I clean installed macOS Monterey from a flash drive. I believe that at the time, the volume it was installed to was labeled Untitled. In any case, Startup Manager (reached from holding Option (⌥) at boot) now shows the Mac disk as "Untitled".

After the install, I used Disk Utility to set the standard names, "Macintosh HD" for the volume group and "Macintosh HD - Data" for the data volume, but Startup Manager still shows "Untitled". How do I rename the label in Startup Manager to the standard "Macintosh HD"?

(I also have a Boot Camp disk with the standard label BOOTCAMP, which is fine.)

I'm aware of the bless command, but I don't know what volume to specify, whether I issue it from a normal terminal or a Recovery Mode terminal, and if I have to temporarily turn off any protections.

David Anderson
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Edward Brey
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3 Answers3

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The Mac Startup Manager is stored in the firmware on the logic broad. The Mac Startup Manager reads the label to display from the same folder that the boot file is located. In the case of macOS, the boot file is named boot.efi and is located in the APFS volume named Preboot by default. Under macOS Monterey, this volume is protected by SIP. The label is stored as an image in the files name .disk_label and .disk_label_2x The file chosen by the firmware depends on the resolution of the display. Both files can be created by the bless command. A third file named .disk_label.contentDetails contains a text copy of the label. This file is not created by the bless command and is not used by the firmware.

Below is one possible procedure which can be use to change these files.

  1. Restart to macOS Recovery, open a Terminal application window and enter the following command to disable SIP.

    csrutil disable

  2. Restart to macOS Monterey, open a Terminal application window and enter the following commands. These commands will change the Mac Startup Manager label for macOS Monterey to Macintosh HD .

    GROUP="$(diskutil info / | grep "APFS Volume Group")"
UUID="${GROUP##* }"
cd /System/Volumes/Preboot/$UUID/System/Library/CoreServices/
sudo bless --folder . --label "Macintosh HD"
printf "Macintosh HD" | sudo tee .disk_label.contentDetails; echo
sudo chgrp wheel .disk*
cd ~

  3. Enter the following command to clear the SIP configuration.

    sudo csrutil clear

  4. Restart macOS Monterey. Upon restart, SIP will be enabled.

David Anderson
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Why not simply rename the disks via disk utility? Boot into recovery mode or an OS, then navigate to disk utility. There, you will see a cluster of volumes:

enter image description here

Click on the first one with the VOLUME tag (in your case, it will be called Untitled)

You should see a screen something like this: enter image description here Click on the bolded name (top left, right of the icon). The name will become a textbox: enter image description here

This will allow the disk to be renamed to whatever you want (even if it is the disk being booted off of, it will rename with no issues.

anonymousaga
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    I had used Disk Utility from a normal boot to set the volume group and data volume to their standard names. (I updated the question to clarify this.) I verified that the standard names appear in Disk Utility in Recovery Mode. However, Startup Manager still shows "Untitled". – Edward Brey Feb 15 '22 at 13:53
  • You may need to boot for a couple hours for it to notice the change in one volume & rename the rest. – anonymousaga Feb 15 '22 at 18:47
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    I have a theory that certain significant updates from Apple may change the .disk_label, .disk_label_2x and .disk_label.contentDetails files based on the disk name. If this is true, then the better solution would be to implement both your answer and my answer. My answer gives an immediate change and your answer would allow the change to persist. However, so far this is just a theory that I derived based on the dates given to the aforementioned files. – David Anderson Feb 16 '22 at 09:25
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I had this problem too when I upgraded my OS from Ventura to Sonoma, my drive still was called "Ventura" in the boot picker even after I renamed it to "Sonoma" in the Finder.

Thanks to David Anderson's answer I was able to fix this. It does work on Sonoma but I was a little unsure what some of the commands provided would do.

For those who don't quite follow the commands given in David's answer, here are the basic steps you need to take. The bless command that fixes the drive is included, while the commands that update the .disk_label.contentDetails file are omitted.

  1. In Recovery Mode, open Terminal and run csrutil disable.

  2. Restart into the macOS version the name you want to change, run Terminal.

  3. In Terminal, run: diskutil info / | grep "APFS Volume Group" and note this is the UUID of your boot drive.

  4. Still in Terminal type: cd /System/Volumes/Preboot/ (the UUID you got from the last command) /System/Library/CoreServices/

  5. If Terminal did not give any errors, next type sudo bless --folder . --label "NEW NAME" replacing NEW NAME with the name you want to appear in the boot picker menu.

That's it, now when you restart the computer and hold down Option, the boot volume menu should show the new name you set.

Once satisfied, you can re-enable SIP with the Terminal command sudo csrutil clear within a booted macOS or csrutil enable within Recovery Mode.

David's additional niceties are not a bad idea, but I don't think strictly necessary. Thought I would restate the basic idea to clarify a little for anyone else having this problem!

David Anderson
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atonaldenim
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