You may be able to increase the chances of booting (especially older hardware and non-EFI) from a USB drive by having rEFInd pre-installed.

Different results when trying to boot by using either a CD/DVD or a USB drive.

Depending on the Mac hardware model & year, you may find:.

Currently running macOS/OS X 10.7 or higher (later versions are more preferred) as this means the hardware is Intel (and not a PowerPC CPU).

You have read our single boot Kali Linux install guide, as this has the same Installation Prerequisites (System requirements, setup assumptions and install media).

This guide will make the following assumptions: The same procedure has also been tested on a Mac Book Air (Early 2014) using macOS Catalina (10.15). In our example, we will be installing Kali Linux on a Mac Mini (Mid 2011) using macOS High Sierra (10.13). However, if you wish to keep macOS/OS X, you will want to refer to our dual-boot guide instead. This guide will show you how to replace macOS/OS X with Kali Linux. Most of the time, there are a few issues that come up, so there is a bit of trial and error. Installing Kali Linux (Single boot) on Apple Mac hardware (such as MacBook/MacBook Pro/MacBook Airs/iMacs/iMacs Pros/Mac Pro/Mac Minis), can be a straight forward, if the hardware is supported. The model & year of the device will determine how successful your experience will be. This is true for Linux in general, not just Kali Linux. T2/M1 chips) do not run Linux well, or at all.

Vmware macbook pro m1