How to Factory Reset Your MacBook or iMac

Previously, wiping and restoring a Mac, iMac, MacBook, or MacBook Pro to its factory settings was a long and complicated process. Thanks to more recent versions of macOS, restoring your Mac is a lot easier with some new built-in tools.

If you’re looking to reset your Mac, we’ll show you what to do below.

Have You Tried Repairing Your Mac First?

If you’re having software problems, you can fix a lot of these by simple reinstalling macOS in macOS Recovery. We’ll cover this a bit later. As long as you don’t wipe the hard drive when you’re in Disk Utility, you can keep all of your data too!

Of course, this isn’t going to help if you want to reset the Mac completely because you’re selling it or want to erase all your data. If that’s what you’re looking for, read on.

How to Enter macOS Recovery

In the process of resetting your Mac, you’ll need to enter macOS Recovery a couple of times to complete the steps. You’ve probably never seen macOS Recovery before, so here’s how to get to it.

For Apple Silicon Macs

Firstly, you must completely shut off your Mac device. You can do this by heading to the Apple menu and selecting Shut Down, or holding down the power button and pressing Shut Down when the popup dialog appears.

Once your Mac is switched off, hold down the power button as if you were turning the Mac back on, but keep holding the button down. After a few seconds, you’ll see a window labeled Startup Options. Click the gear options icon, and then Continue.

For Intel Macs

Firstly, make sure your Mac is connected to the internet. Then you must restart your Mac device. You can do this by heading to the Apple menu and selecting Restart.

Once you’ve pressed Restart, immediately hold down Cmd + R. Keeping holding these keys down until the Apple logo appears on screen. Once you can see the Apple logo, release the keys.

After following these instructions for either type of Mac, your device will boot up into macOS Recovery where you have full admin privileges. You’ll know if you’re in macOS Recovery as the wallpaper will be black, and there will be no apps or files available.

Step 1: Erase Your Data

This step will erase all the data from your Mac. Once this process is done, there’s no way to recover the data, so make sure you’ve backed up all your important data first.

Once you’re in macOS Recovery, you must open Disk Utility from the options on the screen. Inside the app, click the Macintosh HD drive under the heading Internal on the left-hand side of the window.

Now click on Erase in the toolbar at the top of the window. A dialog box will appear on the screen, and inside it, you should name the new drive Macintosh HD. Set the format to APFS or Mac OS Extended. Then click Erase (it might show Erase Volume Group instead).

Make sure you complete the same process for any other drives under Internal, but most people won’t have any more. Any external hard drives or USBs would show under External, so you won’t erase those, but it’s best to keep them unplugged anyway. Exit Disk Utility, and you’ll be taken back to the main window.

Step 2: Reinstall macOS on the Device

Once you’re back on the main macOS Recovery window, you can now follow this step to reinstall a fresh copy of macOS on the device. This is a necessary step in order to use the device again, as the OS was deleted when wiping the hard drive.

For this step, make sure you plug your Mac in to charge. You’ll also need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, but bear in mind it will ask for the network password. Click on Reinstall macOS on the main window.

Your Mac will take you through a set of onscreen instructions to complete the reinstallation of macOS. Each instruction is very self-explanatory, and you don’t need to do much. Essentially, your Mac will download the latest version of its software from the web and install it on the device. Bear in mind this step may take quite a while.

Related: Reasons Why You Might Want to Reinstall macOS

Step 3: Set Up macOS

You only need to worry about setting up macOS if you’re resetting your device for personal use. If you’re selling the device on, you obviously want to leave it completely clear for the buyer to set up.

When setting up macOS, you’ll be greeted with the Setup Assistant. This will take you through exactly the same process as when you first bought the device. Every single modern device uses a similar setup tool, so it should feel pretty familiar.

First, the Setup Assistant will ask you to choose your country and region, then you’ll need to sign in to your Apple ID. You’ll also need to choose some basic settings for the device, and connect it to Wi-Fi. Once this setup process is complete, your Mac is ready to use!

How Is This Different to Before?

This process of resetting your Mac is much easier than previous methods, which had you fiddling with the command line and creating USB installers.

Related: How to Save Command Line Output to File on Windows, Mac, and Linux

This method takes a lot of steps out of a multi-step process. You don’t have to sit there, downloading a macOS installer in advance, entering obscure commands, and booting from a USB drive. macOS Recovery takes all the active work out of it, so you can do something else instead of babysitting it.

A Fresh Mac Again

After resetting your Mac, it’ll be completely factory-fresh again! All data will have been removed and all settings reverted to standard. Your Mac is now ready to be sold on or setup again as new.

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