How to factory reset a MacBook or iMac — the safe way

Before you reset: back up first, then sign out

A factory reset does exactly what the name promises: it returns your Mac to the state it left the factory in, which means every file, photo, app and account setting is wiped. So the real first job is never the reset itself — it is getting anything you want to keep off the machine. Copy your files to an external drive, run a full Time Machine backup, or check they are genuinely synced to iCloud (a spinning 'Uploading…' is not the same as done). On a modern Mac the internal storage is soldered to the logic board and encrypted, so if you wipe first and realise later, there is no easy undo — back up while you still can.

Next, sign out so the Mac is no longer tied to your Apple Account. Sign out of Find My Mac (System Settings → your name → iCloud, or the older System Preferences → Apple ID), sign out of iMessage in the Messages app, and in the Music and TV apps deauthorise the computer so you don't waste one of your account's authorisations. Signing out of Find My also clears Activation Lock — the thing that otherwise leaves the next owner staring at a login they can't get past.

The easy way: Erase All Content & Settings (Apple Silicon and T2 Macs)

If your Mac has Apple Silicon (any M1, M2, M3 or later MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini or Mac Studio) or an Intel Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip, and it is running macOS Monterey or later, there is a one-click reset built in — the same 'Erase All Content and Settings' you may know from an iPhone. Open System Settings → General → Transfer or Reset → Erase All Content and Settings (on macOS Monterey it sits under the System Preferences menu itself). Enter your password, let it sign you out of everything, and confirm.

This route is fast and thorough because it does not laboriously overwrite the disk — it discards the encryption keys. Your data was already encrypted at rest, so deleting the key renders all of it instantly unreadable, after which the Mac reinstalls a clean copy of macOS and reboots to the 'Hello' setup screen. It is the method Apple recommends for a MacBook or iMac you are selling, trading in or passing on, and for most people it is the only method they will ever need.

The manual way: Recovery Mode and Disk Utility (older Intel Macs)

Older Intel Macs without a T2 chip have no 'Erase All Content' button, so you wipe them by hand from Recovery Mode. Shut the Mac down, then start it into Recovery: on an Intel Mac hold Command-R the moment you power on until the Apple logo appears; on an Apple-Silicon Mac (if you take this route instead) hold the power button until 'Loading startup options' shows, then choose Options. Either way you land in the macOS Utilities window.

Pick Disk Utility, select your internal disk (usually 'Macintosh HD'), click Erase, and format it as APFS on any recent macOS. Quit Disk Utility and choose Reinstall macOS to lay a fresh system over the now-empty drive. A quick aside on a symptom people meet here: a folder with a flashing question mark at start-up simply means the Mac can't find a system to boot from — Recovery Mode is exactly where you go to erase and reinstall, or, if the files still matter, to stop and image the drive instead.

Reset vs secure erase: what it does and doesn't leave behind

A factory reset and a secure erase are not automatically the same thing. On any Mac with Apple Silicon or a T2 chip — and on any Mac with FileVault switched on — the data is encrypted, so wiping the key (which Erase All Content does) is a genuine secure erase: the old contents can't be reconstructed. On an older Intel Mac with a plain hard drive and FileVault off, a standard Disk Utility erase largely just clears the index, and a determined forensic recovery could still lift remnants — so if you are handing that machine on, turn FileVault on first or use a full erase rather than relying on the quick one.

The flip side matters just as much: because a proper factory reset is designed to make your old data unrecoverable, it will not 'recover' or preserve anything for you. There is no hidden copy and no bin that survives it. Whatever you did not back up before the wipe is, for all practical purposes on a modern Mac, gone — which is the whole reason the first section of this guide is about backing up.

Reset your Mac by mistake — or it won't boot? That's data recovery

If you have reached this section because you already reset a Mac (or someone else did), or because the Mac won't boot at all and you need the files rather than a clean install, you have crossed from 'reset' into data recovery — and the two need very different handling. A machine that fails to start but whose storage is physically intact is often very recoverable; a drive that has actually been erased is a much harder, sometimes impossible job, which is exactly why we keep repeating: back up before you reset. Whatever the situation, stop using the Mac so nothing new overwrites what might remain.

We recover from Apple machines routinely — see MacBook data recovery and iMac data recovery for how we handle each, and what data recovery actually costs for honest pricing. One hard truth worth stating plainly: on Apple-Silicon and T2 Macs the storage is soldered to the logic board and encrypted, so if that board dies without a backup even a lab may be unable to help — the single best insurance is a backup made before anything goes wrong. If you are already in trouble, start the free online diagnostic and we'll tell you honestly what is possible.