How To Delete Macbook Air To Factory Settings

If y'all plan to give away, sell, or trade in your Mac, the commencement thing you should practice is erase the information on information technology and perform a factory reset. This article shows you how. If you've upgraded to macOS Monterey on a Mac with Apple tree silicon or a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip, follow the steps to erase all content and settings instead of following the steps in this article.

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First, Support Your Data

Before you do anything, you lot should support the files on your Mac. You could do this manually by copying across files onto an external drive. If you apply iCloud, your photos, post, contacts, documents, and so on should exist automatically backed up in cloud storage.

hero timemachine However, we highly recommend that you accept the fourth dimension to perform a Fourth dimension Machine backup of your system using an external bulldoze. That manner, the aforementioned backup volume can be used by Apple's Migration Assistant during a macOS installation to quickly transfer your applications, files and settings from the old Mac to a new one.

Check out our dedicated guide on how to support your Mac using Fourth dimension Auto.

Unlink your Apps

At that place are certain apps that will need to be manually unlinked from your Mac before you say goodbye to it. Some third-party apps crave licenses that only work on a limited number of computers, so recall about whatsoever licenses you may have purchased.

itunes 12 2 icon Similarly, you lot should de-authorize your iTunes account on the Mac, as this removes its access to content that yous bought from the iTunes Shop, iBooks Shop, or App Store, including things like music, movies, Idiot box shows, apps, and books.

To learn how to de-authorize your iTunes account, check out our dedicated guide.

Sign Out of iCloud

Information technology's too important to disable Find My Mac and sign out of ‌iCloud‌ in macOS. That way you lot'll know for certain there isn't anything lingering on your Mac that links your Apple ID to this machine. The following steps show you how.

Click the Apple () symbol in the top left corner of your Mac'due south screen and select System Preferences....
Click iCloud in the preference pane.
Uncheck all the boxes in the list to remove copies of the related information on this Mac.
Click Sign Out.

How to Erase and Reset Your Mac

Now that you've taken the above precautionary steps and unlinked your purchases and accounts, it's time to erase your Mac's bulldoze and reset the system to its manufacturing plant defaults.

Click the Apple () symbol in the top left corner of your Mac's screen and select Restart....
Click Restart.
Hold down the Command and R keys as soon as you hear the Mac tone indicating a reboot.
Wait for the macOS Utilities screen to appear, then click Disk Utility.
Choose your Mac's organisation bulldoze, usually named Macintosh Hard disk, and then click Erase.
Select the Format option Mac Extended (Journaled) or APFS.
Click Erase, confirm the action if prompted, and wait until formatting is complete.
Adjacent, close Disk Utility and click Reinstall macOS.
Follow the installation prompts and allow the process to continue until you run across the Setup Banana appear.
Printing the keys Command+Q to shut down your Mac.