How To Erase and Reset Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to erase and reset your Mac. 

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Now there are two times when it's critical that you erase and completely reset a Mac. One is, if you're going to sell it or give it away. Even if it is to somebody you know you should erase it and give them a new Mac that they can make their own and that has none of your personally identifying information on it. Another time you want to completely erase a Mac is if you buy a used one. Even if it appears to just have been erased and reset you want to do it for yourself to make sure that there is nothing left behind by the old owner. 

Now how you do this depends on the Mac model and the operating system installed on it. The main place to go to get all the information you need is this page at Apple's site. This will walk you through all the steps here. I'll be able to show you how to get started but I can't show you all the steps as I can't screen record while I'm erasing my Mac and I don't really want to erase my Mac to demonstrate this anyway. 

The important divider line here is if you've got a Mac that is running macOS Monterey or later. That's the 2021 version of macOS, and it either has Apple Silicon or it's an Intel Mac that has the T2 security chip. So only the very last Intel Macs that came out. If your Mac is running something before Monterey or if it's an older Intel Mac you can't use this technique. Instead you're going to have to do some different and I'll show you that at the end. 

So the first thing you probably want to do before you try to erase your Mac is go to this page and read through it. It will tell you what's going to happen so you have an over-view and know what to expect. Of course it goes without saying that you already have all your data off of this Mac. If you've moved to a new Mac you've moved all your data there, you have tested it and made sure you have everything. I find it's often handy, even if you don't plan on using that Mac ever again, to keep it around for a few weeks or even months just to make sure. You never know when there might be a piece of data you've left behind by accident and it would be nice to have it there. But as soon as you erase it you won't be able to get any of that back. 

So if you're using macOS Monterey or later with Apple Silicon or a very late model Intel Mac with a T2 security chip you don't have to restart it into a special mode and use disk utility or do any of that. You can erase your Mac right from System Settings. All you need to do is go to the Apple Menu and choose System Settings. Note that in macOS Monterey this is called System Preferences. But it is the same thing. You go into System Settings here. Now you're going to look under General for Transfer or Reset. However, in macOS Monterey it is actually not under General. It's in the Main List all the way at the bottom and it's called Erase All Content and Settings. When you click this it's going to give you a  button here that allows you to erase everything. So you can click that and then it is going to ask you to Authenticate with your User Account Password and then you can Unlock this part here. It's going to tell you when your Mac was last backed up with Time Machine. If you didn't just back it up you should definitely do so. Then you can continue past that. Then you're going to get to this screen. This is as far as I will go because it's actually going to try to Quit All Apps after this and then I won't be able to Screen Record anymore. But this is giving you a list of the current user and any other users that are on this Mac, maybe one you forgot about, and it will tell you, of course, that it is going to erase all of this. So you want to be very careful continuing past this point. 

Note that at any time you can go up here to the Menu Bar and see you're actually in an app called Erase Assistant. Here you can Quit Erase Assistant at any time. 

Part of the process is going to have you sign out of your Apple ID and that will disconnect it from Find My. So you can no longer find the Mac, lock it, or erase the drive remotely. 

Now let's get back to this page at Apple's site here. Let's say you are using macOS from before macOS Monterey or you have an older Intel Mac. Then you can't use Erase All Content and Settings. Then it will take you to this part of the page here and show you the steps for erasing an older Mac running an older version of macOS. Read all of this carefully to see what applies to you. If you go to What To Do Before You Sell, Give Away, or Trade-in your Mac then you can scroll down here and see if your Mac doesn't have Erase All Content and Settings and see all of the steps here. You have to do a lot of different things. After, of course, getting all your files off of it, you're going to have to sign out of iTunes, sign out of iCloud, sign out of iMessage, Unpair Bluetooth Devices, and then finally erase your Mac by shutting it down and restarting it into Recovery Mode. It gives you the steps here. 

So if you want to sell or give away your Mac, or even just send it into a Recycling Center, you want to make sure you completely erase it first. Also, if you're buying a used Mac make sure that you erase it completely as your first step so it is totally yours when you're starting off. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.