Create ISO image from macos installer

1. Download the installers from the Mac App Store. If they are no more listed, below links are for:

Macos Mojave Macos Catalina

UPDATE: to ease up macos downloads, use gibMacOS. Link at the end of this article. For those of you using gibMacOS to download the needed macOS, there are two important notes: - Apple has changed the way they distribute macOS, starting macOS 11 (Big Sur): internet recovery USBs can no longer be built via MakeInstall on Windows. macOS versions through Catalina will still work though. - Also, Apple distributes the OS via an InstallAssistant.pkg file. BuildmacOSInstallApp.command is not needed to create the install application when in macOS in this case - and you can simply run InstallAssistant.pkg, which will place the install app in your /Applications folder on macOS.

2. Create a dmg image and mount it:

For Monterey, the volume must be bigger:

hdiutil create -o /tmp/Monterey -size 16384m -volname Monterey -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J

The example below is for Mojave but apart from the image size, the method is similar.

fmbp16:tmp florian$ hdiutil create -o Mojave -size 8500m -volname Mojave -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
...............................................................................................................................................
created: /Volumes/data.1/tmp/Mojave.dmg

fmbp16:tmp florian$ hdiutil attach Mojave.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/Mojave
/dev/disk6          	Apple_partition_scheme         	
/dev/disk6s1        	Apple_partition_map            	
/dev/disk6s2        	Apple_HFS                      	/Volumes/Mojave

3. Run createinstallmedia from within the macos installer and unmount the media afterwards:

fmbp16:tmp florian$ sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Mojave --nointeraction
Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%
Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... 100%
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Install media now available at "/Volumes/Install macOS Mojave"

fmbp16:tmp florian$ hdiutil detach /volumes/Install\ macOS\ Mojave
"disk6" ejected.
fmbp16:tmp florian$ 

4. Convert DMG to ISO and rename it to have iso extension afterwards:

fmbp16:tmp florian$ hdiutil detach /volumes/Install\ macOS\ Mojave
"disk6" ejected.
fmbp16:tmp florian$ hdiutil convert Mojave.dmg -format UDTO -o Mojave.cdr 
Reading Driver Descriptor Map (DDM : 0)…
Reading Apple (Apple_partition_map : 1)…
Reading  (Apple_Free : 2)…
Reading disk image (Apple_HFS : 3)…
..............................................................................................................................................
Elapsed Time:  8m 30.045s
Speed: 16.7Mbytes/sec
Savings: 0.0%
created: /Volumes/data.1/tmp/Mojave.cdr
fmbp16:tmp florian$ mv Mojave.cdr Mojave.iso

Now enjoy ;) Extra: https://github.com/corpnewt/gibMacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372