Factory reset a MacBook or iMac in the right order — files first, wipe second

The order matters more than the buttons

Every bad reset story has the same shape: the wipe went fine, and something wasn't saved first. A factory reset returns the machine to its shipped state — files, photos, applications, accounts, all gone, with no partial version on offer. So step one has nothing to do with resetting. Copy what you care about to an external drive, run Time Machine to completion, or confirm iCloud has actually finished syncing rather than promising to (an 'Uploading…' that never resolves means not yet). On current Macs the storage is encrypted and soldered down, which turns 'forgot to back up' into a permanent condition.

Step two is untangling the Mac from your Apple identity. Turn off Find My Mac under your name in System Settings' iCloud section — doing so is also what releases Activation Lock, the barrier that would otherwise greet the next owner. Sign out of iMessage from inside Messages, and in the Music and TV apps remove this computer's authorisation so the slot returns to your account.

Modern Macs: the built-in full wipe

Any Mac on Apple Silicon — the M-chip generations of Air and Pro, plus the desktop iMac, Mac mini and Mac Studio lines — and any Intel model carrying the T2 chip, running Monterey or newer, keeps the whole procedure behind one control: Erase All Content and Settings, found in System Settings under General, in the Transfer or Reset panel (Monterey files it under the System Preferences menu instead). Enter your password, let the sign-outs run, confirm.

Notice how fast it finishes. Nothing is being scrubbed sector by sector; the disk was encrypted all along, and the reset simply destroys the keys — after which every existing byte is permanent noise — then installs a clean macOS and restarts at the setup screen. This is the mechanism Apple intends for resale and hand-me-downs, and for owners of modern Macs it's the only wipe that ever needs running.

Older Intel Macs: Recovery Mode by hand

An Intel Mac without the T2 has no single switch, so the wipe is manual, through Recovery Mode: shut down, power on holding Command-R, release at the Apple logo. (On Apple Silicon the equivalent is holding the power button until startup options load, then choosing Options — useful for repairs, though the one-button erase above remains the better wipe.) You land in the macOS Utilities window.

Inside, Disk Utility comes first: pick the internal disk, usually named Macintosh HD, choose Erase, and format as APFS on any recent system. Then quit and run Reinstall macOS onto the empty disk. If you arrived here chasing a flashing question-mark folder at boot, that symbol means no startup system could be found — Recovery Mode is where you either fix it with a clean install, or, if the disk holds anything wanted, where you pause and have the drive imaged before touching Erase.

What a reset destroys — and whether it destroys enough

Two mirror-image questions get asked about reset security. First: is it thorough? On encrypted storage — all Apple Silicon and T2 machines, plus any older Mac with FileVault on — yes. Key destruction is absolute, and nobody reconstructs the contents afterwards. The exception is an old Intel machine with a spinning drive and FileVault off, where a standard erase clears the catalogue while leaving data physically present for forensic tools; before selling such a Mac, switch FileVault on first, or use a full overwrite erase instead of the quick one.

And the mirror question — can anything be got back afterwards? A modern reset is engineered so the answer is no. There's no recovery partition holding your files, no bin that survives, nothing left for a lab to read. What wasn't backed up before an Erase All Content run is gone as a matter of cryptography — which is why this guide runs in the order it does.

When it stops being a reset problem

A Mac already wiped by mistake, or one that won't boot when it's the files you're after — that's a data recovery job, and the odds split sharply. Won't-boot machines with healthy storage recover well, routinely. Genuinely erased modern Macs don't; the cryptography above cuts both ways. In either case, stop using the machine now, because every new write settles on space your files might occupy.

Our Apple bench work is set out on the MacBook data recovery and iMac data recovery pages, with pricing explained honestly at what data recovery costs. One limit stated upfront: we work on Mac storage that can be removed — hard drives and blade SSDs — and not on chips soldered to the logic board, which is what T2 and Apple Silicon machines carry. On those Macs the backup habit isn't advice; it's the entire safety net. Stuck now? The free online diagnostic gets you a straight answer.