Updating Raspberry Pi OS

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Follow these steps to install updates for your Raspberry Pi operating system. These instructions assume you have the latest release of the operating system. If you need to upgrade to the latest OS, you’ll find those instructions further down the page.

Update Raspberry Pi OS

1. Save any open files and close out of all programs. Then, open the Terminal interface by clicking on the Terminal icon in the top of your display which looks like >_ in a box.
2. Type sudo apt update and press return/enter.
3. Type sudo apt dist-upgrade and press return/enter.
4. Type sudo apt clean and press return/enter. This will cleanup any temporary files that are no longer necessary.
5. Type sudo reboot and press return/enter. This will restart the computer.

Upgrade from Raspberry OS “Stretch” to “Buster”

The Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian which uses creative names for each OS release. The following instructions are an excerpt from Make Use Of. [Source] They describe how to update from “Stretch” to “Buster.”

To upgrade Raspbian Stretch to Raspbian Buster, start by updating and upgrading to the most recent packages.

sudo apt updatesudo apt dist-upgrade -y

Next, the firmware should be updated with:

sudo rpi-update

Upgrading to Raspbian Buster means switching repositories. This is easily done in the terminal by editing the sources:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Use the arrow keys to browse through the list until you find

deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ stretch main contrib non-free rpi

Change this line, replacing “stretch” with “buster”:

deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ buster main contrib non-free rpi

Press Ctrl+X to save and exit, then remove a large changelog file:

sudo apt-get remove apt-listchanges

This will save time when the operating system updates.

With the sources updated you can run a full package update and upgrade:

sudo apt updatesudo apt dist-upgrade

This will take a while to complete, so be patient. When done, use

sudo apt autoremove -y

to discard old packages with changed dependencies, then

sudo apt autoclean

This clears the package cache, removing data no longer available for download, and saving space on your Raspberry Pi.

To complete the upgrade from Raspbian Stretch to Raspbian Buster, reboot.

sudo reboot