If you need a USB drive that's widely compatible with different devices, you may want to format it to FAT32. Here's how to do so on Mac and PC.

If Windows won't format your USB drive to the FAT32 file system, remove the write protection or use CMD, PowerShell, or free software to do the same.

While most modern hard drives make use of the NTFS file system on Windows and APFS on macOS, both of which offer a wide array of features — when it comes to compatibility, FAT32 reigns supreme ...

You can format an external drive quickly and easily in Windows, without the need of any third-party tools. But before you format your USB drive, you need to consider which file system to use.

Despite the popularity of AirDrop, cloud services and email, the most convenient way to share files is sometimes with a thumb drive. See how to format a drive to work with Windows PCs and Macs.