Wait for the macOS Utilities screen to appear, then click Disk Utility. Choose your Mac's system drive, usually named Macintosh HD, then click Erase. Select the Format option Mac Extended. Dec 15, 2020 If you don't see this button, click Erase instead. If Find My is turned on for this Mac, you may be asked to enter your Apple ID to authorize the erase. Forgot your Apple ID? After the erase is done, select any other internal volumes that may be listed in the sidebar, then click the delete volume (–) button in the toolbar to delete each volume.
If you don't see this button, click Erase instead. If Find My is turned on for this Mac, you may be asked to enter your Apple ID to authorize the erase. Forgot your Apple ID? After the erase is done, select any other internal volumes that may be listed in the sidebar, then click the delete volume (–) button in the toolbar to delete each volume. Want to restore or sell your Mac? AppleInsider covers the step-by-step process of backing up your files, wiping the hard drive and restoring everything on a. Macs also have no way to uninstall or install operating system features, so there's no way to easily remove the many applications Apple included with your Mac. On OS X 10.10 Yosemite and earlier, it was possible to open a terminal window and issue commands to delete these system apps, which are located in the /Applications folder.
Find My User Guide
If you're no longer using a device, you can remove it from Find My. If you're planning to give it away or sell it, you should erase it first.
Note: See the Apple Support articles for full details about preparing to sell, give away, or trade in your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch.
In the Find My app on your Mac, click Devices.
In the Devices list, select the device you want to remove.
Click the Info button on the map, then click Remove This Device.
Note: You can also Control-click the device in the Devices list, then choose Remove this Device.
When you remove a device from Find My, Activation Lock is turned off immediately.
You can also remove the Mac you're using—choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then do one of the following:
Click Overview in the sidebar, then click Sign Out.
Signing out of iCloud turns off all iCloud features on the device. See If you sign out of your Apple ID preferences.
Click iCloud in the sidebar, then deselect Find My Mac to remove your Mac.
For information about using Find My with other devices, see the user guide for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch, or the AirPods Support website.
Note: If you no longer have a device (Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch), you need to remotely erase it before you can remove it. See Remotely erase a device.
There are mainly two reasons why you want to restore your Mac to factory settings and erase everything.
You want to erase your MacBook Pro/Air, MacBook, iMac to sell or give away the Mac.
Your Mac is running slow or having other problems so that you want to delete everything on Mac to start over.
It is not difficult to erase everything on a Mac and reformat the MacBook or iMac. But if you want to reset MacBook Pro/Air, iMac without losing data, or securely and completely wipe a Mac, there are a couple of things you should do. Just follow this guide to complete all the steps that are needed to securely and completely erase everything on Mac. Your Mac will be restored to factory settings after that.
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Step 1: Back Up Your Mac Before Factory Reset
I believe that there must be some important files on your Mac. Therefore, it is a must to back up your files before erasing your MacBook or iMac. There are mutiple options to back up your Mac:
Move everything that are important to you to an external hard drive. It is time-consuming but feasible if you have limited documents, photos, videos, etc. that need to be backed up before erasing Mac.
Back up your files on Mac to a cloud storage, such as iCloud. Before doing that, make sure your iCloud account have enough free space.
Make a copy of your Mac data to an external hard drive with a backup program, such as Time Machine, Apple's built-in backup tool for Mac. Learn about the steps to back up a Mac: How to Backup Your Mac with or without Time Machine.
You can wipe a Mac without losing data by using one of the backup methods mentioned above. And to reduce the size of your Mac's backup and incease the backup speed, it is recommended to clean useless junk files on your Mac before a Time Machine or iCloud backup. FonePaw MacMaster can easily delete caches, logs, borwsing history, duplicate files and photos, large files, useless apps and more from your Mac.
Download
Download and run FonePaw MacMaster on your Mac.
Select the file type you want to clean, such as system junks, duplicate photos. Click Scan.
Click Clean to remove the junks you don't need.
Go ahead to back up your Mac. The backup will be finished more quickly, taking less space of your external hard drive or iCloud account.
Step 2: Completely Delete Private Files
Do you know that files on Mac are actually recoverable after factory reset? That's right. Even though you have reformatted your Mac and erased everything on Mac, it is still possible to recover the erased files on the Mac with a professional data recovery program such as FonePaw Data Recovery. If you have confidential files on your Mac and don't want to take the risk that somebody may find the files from the reformatted Mac after performing data recovery, you can use Eraser on FonePaw MacMasterto securely delete confidential files on your Mac before factory reset. The Eraser can erase the trace of a file on the hard drive and make it unrecoverable.
Install FonePaw MacMaster on your Mac.
Click Eraser and select the files you want to destroy.
Click Erase to make it unrecoverable.
Step 3: Turn off FileVault
FileVault encryption is an Apple built-in feature that is designed to encrypt your hard drive and files on the hard drive. It is recommended to turn off FileVault before reset and clean install macOS system. Here are the stpes to disable FileVault encryption.
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Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy.
On the Security & Privacy window, click the FileVault tab.
Click Lock button and you will need to enter password of the administrator account the unlock FileVault settings.
After entering the password, you are able to click Turn Off FileVault. Click it.
All files on your Mac will be dencrypted after FileVault is off.
Step 4: Remove iTunes Authorization and iCloud Account
You don't want your iTunes or iCloud account to be linking to your MacBook or iMac if you decide to sell it or give it away. You can authorize only 5 computer with your iTunes account so you don't want to lose an allocation to a Mac that you no longer own. So before erasing your MacBook or iMac, you should first deauthorize iTunes and disable iCloud on your Mac.
Deauthorize iTunes on Mac
Open iTunes on Mac.Click Account > Authorizations > Deauthorize This Computer.
You'll need to enter the password of your Apple ID. Then click Deauthorize.
Sign out of iCloud on Mac
Open System Preference > iCloud. Click Sign Out.A window will pop up, asking whether you want to keep a copy of your iCloud data on the Mac.
Deselect all the options and click Continue, which will ensure that your iCloud data won't stay on the Mac.
Also, don't forget that your iCloud account can also be used to receive iMessage. So run Messages, click Preferences > Accounts to sign out of iMessage.
Step 5: Erase MacBook, MacBook Air/Pro, iMac
After finishing the above steps, you are now offically able to wipe your MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac. You need to erase your Mac in recovery mode.
Enter your Mac into recovery mode
Power off your Mac and then reboot it. As it is rebooting, press and hold Command + R (Option + Command + R or Shift + Option + Command + R) until you see the Apple logo.
Generally you can use Command + R combination to enter the Recovery mode. If you need to upgrade you need to the latest macOS compatible with your Mac, use Option + Command + R; If you want to clean install the macOS that came with your Mac, use Shift + Option + Command + R.
Erase everything on your Mac
When you are in recovery mode on Mac, you will see the macOS Utilities menu. Select Disk Utility.
Select the disk to erase. To erase everything on your Mac, you usually should choose the main hard drive named Macintosh HD.
If the Mac is running High Sierra or later, Disk Utility will show all the Macs linked with your Apple ID under Macintosh HD. So be careful not to delete the drive of other Macs.
Click Erase. Then you need to enter name and format of the drive. You can choose either APFS or Mac OS Extended (journaled) to reformat the Mac. APFS is a new file system introduced by Apple since High Sierra, which is more recommendable.Click Erase to begin wiping everything on your Mac.
Step 6: Reinstall macOS on MacBook, iMac
After deleting everything on your Mac, you can now reinstall macOS. Go back to macOS Utilities menu. Select Reinstall macOS and follow the on-screen instructions to finish.
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That's all about how to factory reset your Mac and erase everthing. If you have more question, drop it in the comment section.
