I’m used to formatting disks on Linux with GParted, but unfortunately there’s no version for MacOS. They offer some sort of bootable image, but that sounded like a hassle. Luckily it turns out MacOS has a built-in tool. Usage is simple. I wanted to format a drive to ExFat, and all it takes is:

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diskutil list

To list the drives on your system and find the name of the one you want to format. Then:

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diskutil eraseDisk ExFAT DRIVENAME diskX

Where ExFAT is one of the possible formats, DRIVENAME is the name you want to give to the drive, say “MyThumbDrive”. The X in diskX needs to be the number of the drive to be formatted. That’s it.

⚠️ WARNING
Be aware this will nuke your entire drive! All data on it will be lost.