How to Erase and Factory Reset your MacBook/iMac in 2024 [Easy Tutorial] (Apple Silicon) M1/M2 Chip

foreign [Music] hey what's going on everyone I'm the one and only and today I'm going to show you guys how to factory reset an M1 or M2 Mac or really any future Apple silicon Mac now it's not as straightforward as something like the iPhones where you just go into settings and hit factory restore there's a few extra steps you need to do here and apple doesn't make it as Cut Throat or as straight forward so let's go ahead and begin now first things first you want to make sure that your software version is up to date or at least to the latest OS in order to check you can go up here to the Apple logo up top and hit about this Mac now as you can see I am currently on Mac OS Ventura 13.4.1 which at the time of recording this is the most recent now if you want to know how to upgrade your OS you're going to want to click down here to system settings then you're going to want to click on General and then finally you're going to want to click software update and if you do have an update it should pop up right here I currently do have updates available but only for Final Cut Pro motion and I believe logic so I will disregard that for now however if you're on something like Mac OS 11 or 12 I highly recommend you upgrade before starting okay now next similar to iPhones you want to make sure that you do have a backup you will have to go into your time machine on Mac so you can simply search that up over here with the magnifying glass click on time machine and then from here you can add a backup disk now I already have a backup of this Mac so there's no need to do that but always make sure that you have a backup that way if you do happen to purchase a different Mac in the future or you're going to upgrade to a better one you can then just transfer all of your information onto the new Mac okay now the next steps are very very important you're going to want to remove any account associated with this Mac especially if you're planning on selling this to another other individual most importantly you're going to want to remove your iCloud accounts and also your iMessage so let's start with iCloud and first you want to make sure that you detach any kind of attachment to your iCloud account from this Mac so what you're going to want to do again is go down to system settings click on your name here where it says Apple ID now once you've clicked on your name you can see you have different options here you have iCloud media and purchases Family Sharing and then all of your devices you're going to want to scroll all the way to the bottom and down here you'll have an option to sign out so let's click that now it says if you want to keep a copy of your iCloud data on this Mac and of course that would defeat the purpose of what we're trying to do here so make sure to uncheck everything because we do not want anything left over on this Mac so after unchecking everything let's hit continue and now it says do you want to download a copy of your iCloud photos to this Mac we don't want that so we're going to hit delete from Mac it's going to ask again for account information just make sure you keep hitting delete from Mac and now it's asking for your Apple ID password so really quickly type that in okay and now we're going to hit continue okay now here this is asking for the computer or Mac password this is the password that you type in when you initially lift the lid and open up your Mac alright so now that we've typed in our Mac password we're going to hit OK and just like that now the Mac is no longer associated with our Apple ID so we're doing good so far now the other important account that we need to look at and actually it's bouncing down here for us is you're going to want to log out of your iMessages now one important thing to know is that on earlier versions of Mac OS you're going to have to individually go in to your iMessages and log out but if you have Mac OS 13 or higher so you can see if we click on messages it's already logged us out and so this is good we want to ensure that none of our personal data none of our iMessages are left over so if you see this this is a good sign once we've logged out of iCloud and iMessage we're ready to rock and roll and actually reset the mac and format it okay so now this step what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to shut down the Mac so you're going to go up here to the top left click on the Apple logo and we're going to go ahead and shut down this machine so hit shut down okay so now at this step what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to press and hold your power button your power button is the button over here at the top right and again you're going to want to hold it like so foreign you're going to see the Apple logo and it says continue holding first startup options so make sure you continue holding and now it's going to say loading startup options as soon as it says that you can let go now here you're going to see two options you're going to see your hard drive and then options you're definitely going to want to go over to options and hit continue now at this point if you are an administrator of the account your sole account should appear here if you have multiple accounts on your Mac make sure that you click any that you know the passwords for if you don't know any of the passwords to any of the accounts or forgot them you do have this convenient link down here that says forgot all passwords thankfully my passwords I do remember so I'm going to type in the computer's password not your iCloud password now we hit continue and here you're going to have different options you're going to have restore from time machine reinstall Mac OS Safari and Disk Utility the first one is for what I mentioned at the beginning you should have a backup that way you can restore any and all information if you do happen to upgrade your machine or buy a Mac at a later time but what we're going to want to do is we're going to want to go to Disk Utility we're going to click on that highlight it and go to continue now from here you're going to have two different options now over here on the top left this is your standard disk this is your hard drive and this is what we're going to want to erase that way nothing is left on the Mac and it essentially is going to be factory reset for the next buyer for if you're returning it and things of that nature the way to do this is you want to highlight it click on your disk in this case that mine is just named to the default Macintosh HD it's likely yours will also be named this you're going to want to come over here to erase and now here you're going to have different options you're going to have the option to reformat it whether you have it encrypted case sensitive or both but for 99 of people you're just going to want to leave it on the default which is apfs you can name it something differently but honestly it's just best to just leave it there at the default and now you're going to hit erase it's going to ask for confirmation and of course we're going to hit erase Mac once more it's going to ask if you're sure and yes we're going to hit erase Mac and restart so this may take a minute or two for it to load up and then we will go on to the next steps okay and now after a bit of editing magic we're back and so now you're going to be presented with this screen that says to activate the Mac now here is going to ask you to select a Wi-Fi network and the reason it's asking is because you're going to have to reinstall a new copy of Mac OS onto the computer so what you're going to want to do is come here to the top right click the Wi-Fi logo and then your Wi-Fi network should appear so like normal as if you're connecting to your Wi-Fi network for the first time click on your Wi-Fi network and type in your password and wait maybe five seconds for it to connect now once you successfully connect you can see the Wi-Fi logo is now filled in and it's going to think for a little bit and then it should give us the option and to hit next here momentarily alright it says your Mac is activated and now it's popping up and it says Exit to recovery so this is good we're almost done with the formatting and reset process so let's go back and go to exit to recovery now here it's important you can check your disk utility again if you wish but it should be erased and see how there's nothing left there so we have 245 Gigs available this is a 256 gigabyte hard drive so we're looking good okay so now that we've checked if you did decide to check just make sure to click up here for Disk Utility if you want to go back and then just go to quit Disk Utility it should take you back to the same screen now here it's important you must reinstall a new copy of Mac OS because we had the latest one it's asking us to reinstall a new copy of Mac OS Ventura so that's exactly what we're going to do we're going to highlight that click continue and it's going to present us with a typical first screen for installation so we're going to hit continue as is typical we have to accept the terms of the software license agreement so of course we're going to hit agree even though we read absolutely none of it it's going to ask you onto which disk you want to install Mac OS if you had like an external hard drive there might be a different disk but of course we want to click on our standard Macintosh HD highlight it and click continue it's going to say your computer is not connected to power now I have a good bit of juice on this Mac it is at 73 I should be fine but I do believe if you're under 50 battery it will force you to plug in your uh power adapter I think we're good so we're going to hit continue now this part is the longest and what's likely going to take the most time for you now this process this phase is entirely dependent on your Wi-Fi network and your settings so depending on how fast your Wi-Fi is this may take a lot longer or a lot shorter it's telling me that my estimated time is about 2 hours and 39 minutes but this will likely drop I do have somewhat fast Wi-Fi and so this may or may not take if I had a guess maybe about an hour so this is why I asked to definitely plug it into Power if you're under 50 so we're gonna go ahead and let it do that we're gonna let it reinstall a new copy of Mac OS Ventura and then once that is complete I will be back and then we will finish off the final steps alright guys so like I mentioned it only took me about 30 minutes or so not the two hours and 40 minutes it was quoting but if you get to this screen which reads select your country or region this is how you know you have done everything correctly rest assured all of your personal data at this point has been completely wiped and the Mac has been correctly formatted and a fresh copy of the recent Mac OS version is now installed so this is the same screen you will get if you open up the lid of a Macbook for the first time fresh out of the box and now the MacBook is completely ready if you were gonna sell it to someone give it away to family member or if you change your mind and wanted to return it to the Apple Store it is correctly formatted and speaking of returns if you are within the 14 day window just make sure that you keep the documentation Chargers as well as the wall adapter make sure you package everything nice and neat and then that way Apple can issue you a full refund so guys I really hope these instructions were very straightforward and clear if you found this video useful please drop a like as it helps my channel out tremendously and if for any reason you got caught up in between any of those steps and are encountering any issues please feel free to follow me either on Instagram or Twitter tweet at me or DM me and I'd be more than happy to help troubleshoot alrighty guys that's been it for me as always make sure to stay hydrated hit that subscribe button down below if you want to see future Tech content just like this and with that I'm clocking out for now but I cannot wait to catch you all in my next video [Music] [Applause] thank you

Channel: TheJuan&Only

Views: 106,417

Keywords: factory reset, erase data, Apple Silicon, M1 chip, M2 chip, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, iMac, system reset, data wipe, restore to factory settings, tutorial, step-by-step, easy guide, optimization, macOS, troubleshooting, Apple device reset, data security, Apple ecosystem, system maintenance, software reset, system cleanup, system refresh, howtofactoryresetmacbook, resetmacbookair, howtorestoremac, 2023, macbookair13inch, macbookair15inch, macbookpro14

Id: ABfGOYUaPXA

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2023