Raspberry Pi's Paul Oberosler Makes USB Gadget Mode as Easy as Flicking a Switch

Raspberry Pi's Paul Oberosler has announced a new package that offers an "easy way" enable Ethernet over USB in USB Gadget Mode on anything from the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ upwards — adding the feature as a simple toggle in Raspberry Pi Imager 2.

"The idea [of Ethernet over USB] is beautifully simple — plug the Raspberry Pi into a laptop and it appears as a USB network adapter, just like when you enable USB tethering on a smartphone. At least, that’s the theory," Oberosler writes. "In reality, getting this to work has traditionally involved a mix of outdated scripts, manual configuration steps, and platform-specific instructions that only reliably supported one host OS at a time — Windows, macOS, or Linux, but rarely all three."

Oberosler's solution, now officially rolled-out and supporting Raspberry Pi OS "Trixie" images from the version dated 20.10.2025 and onwards, is a simple toggle in Raspberry Pi Imager, the company's in-house tool for writing operating system images to storage devices. Click the toggle in the "Customization" menu, set a hostname, and when the image is written it will be automatically configured for USB Gadget Mode.

The feature is supported on the full-size Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, and Raspberry Pi 5, the Raspberry Pi 500 and Raspberry Pi 500+ wedge computers, the Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi Zero W, and Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W compact boards, and the Compute Module 5 when installed in a suitable carrier board — with the Compute Module 4 "technically supported," Oberosler notes, "but additional manual setup is required." Oberosler also advises the use of a powered USB hub, as switching to USB Gadget Mode turns each board's power input into a data-and-power connection — and for power-hungry devices like the Raspberry Pi 5, Raspberry Pi 500, and Raspberry Pi 500+, a laptop's USB port is unlikely to deliver the current required for stable operation.

While that handles the configuration on the Raspberry Pi side, internet connection sharing — which allows the Raspberry Pi to take advantage of the host machine's network connection — requires host-side configuration. For this, Oberosler has penned guides for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, while advising those on Linux that "instructions vary depending on the desktop environment or init system."

The full guide, including instructions on enabling USB Gadget Mode in existing Raspberry Pi OS "Trixie" installations, is available on the Raspberry Pi blog.