Boot your M1 MacBook Pro or Air to Recovery + Reinstall macOS [Apple Silicon]

Do you need to erase and reinstall macOS on your Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro & MacBook Air? If so a few things have changed! This is a step-by-step guide that will show you all that you need to know to factory restore your Apple Silicon Mac back to the way it was when you first received it!

I will go over the following
How to boot to macOS recovery on your Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro & MacBook Air
How to erase your hard drive on your Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro & MacBook Air
How to reinstall macOS on your Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro & MacBook Air

Order of that you should follow for reinstalling macOS on Apple Silicon.

1. macOS Recovery
2. System Recovery – (Will boot automatically if macOS Recovery is unavailable)
3. macOS Big Sur USB Installer Drive – (External boot for macOS Installers is enabled by default on Apple Silicon)
4. Apple Configurator 2 REVIVE option – This option will reinstall macOS Recovery (retains user data on the SSD hard drive)
5. Apple Configurator 2 RESTORE option – This option will Reinstall macOS Recovery, ERASE your SSD hard drive and reinstall macOS
Apple has just posted a new articles on macOS recovery, booting to DFU mode and how to restore macOS Firmware.

Use macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon
macOS Recovery is the built-in recovery system of your Mac.
You can use the apps in macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon to repair your internal disk, reinstall macOS, restore your files from a Time Machine backup, set the security policy for different disks, transfer files between two Mac computers, start up in safe mode and more.
Reinstalling macOS requires an internet connection. To connect to the internet, you can use a wireless or wired network connection. See Connect to the internet using Wi-Fi.
Note: if you’re trying to connect to a captive portal (for example, at a coffee shop, library or hotel) or an enterprise network, you might not be able to access the internet in macOS Recovery.

This video is is for the following Apple Silicon Macs
Apple Silicon M1 Mac Mini
Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Air
Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro 13"

Links

Twitter

Mac Transition to Apple Silicon Everything you need to know!

New Article How to reinstall macOS on your Apple Silicon Mac

How to boot your Apple Silicon Mac into DFU mode + Restore macOS with Apple Configurator 2.

macOS ISPW Firmware Database - Download Full macOS ISPW Files!

MacOS Big Sur Index of need to know changes! (UPDATED)

macOS System Status (Issues) – OS, Xprotect & App Version Database

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[Mr.Macintosh]

In this video, I will show you how to erase your mac and factory restore it by reinstalling macOS. A few things have changed from the Intel Mac Process. I will walk you through all the differences. Let me know if you have any questions!

[Steve-lgxt]

Omg thanks i found this video. I kept on pressing command R, but it didn’t work at all

[troydavis]

You sir are an amazing person ! I found myself needing this right after i got my M1 Mac Mini . I am having screen flickering issue when plugging in dual screens and thought it was a software issue so i cleared my HD and kept getting the download error. This worked like a charm

[serenajfk]

This video was a lifesaver when my Monterey upgrade got stuck at boot up..thank you!

[jinkertsun]

Great video. I setup my new machine transferring my old machine’s apps, data etc. Something went badly wrong and I ended up with about four different user accounts on the front screen and most of my storage had been used. Not what I wanted so I tried restoring back to factory setting. I followed your video to the letter and it’s currently restoring. However, what are Apple playing at making a factory reset this difficult? Someone new to a Mac would be up the creek if this had happened to them. Thanks for showing the way.

[takgoya]

Thanks for the video!
I followed your steps and everything worked until I had to create the user account, I faced an issue saying "can not create user account", no matters if trying with/without appleID.
I found more people having this issue and the way to solve it (not formatting/reinstalling) is to go into your iCloud and removing MAC from your devices. Otherwise it keep some sort of link between the MAC and appleID.

In case someone else have this issue, try this way through iCloud, it worked for me.

[NoDramaAllowed]

Hi thanks for your video but when I'm trying to reinstall my macOS big sur then following error is coming "An error occurred prepanng the update. Failed to personalize the software update. Please try again."



Can you please tell me how can I fix this ? :(

[Luma_]

It woulda been nice if the other videos showing how to restore on Big Sur mentioned that it's different on Apple Silicon. Thanks bro!

[Γιώργος-μξ]

Very nice video, it helped me a lot, but I have a question : how can I reinstall the version that came with my mac ?

[motobybrian]

Thank you. I’ve been chasing my tail trying to figure out why command+r wasn’t working.

[drohne]

you are the bob ross of reinstalling mac os, many thanks

[ArthurJohnGeronimo]

Awesome guide. Thanks for this.
Im trying to remove 11.3 beta as my sideloaded apps from ipad stopped working after updating to beta. Is there any way to go back to non beta OS? I have M1 air.

[Johnf]

Thank you so much. Been trying all day to format my 2020 Mac mini with command R, etc! Awesome video, Works perfect. thanks mate. 😊

[walidzein]

For some reason I see a data volume next to Macintosh HD so I deleted both volumes and I clicked reinstall OS Big Sur it gave me the option to choose between the Macintosh HD or Data volume so I chose Macintosh HD I don’t know why the Data volume is even there

[YTKushSmoke]

I try to do the second one but it’s says installation of Mac OS could not continue. That content cannot be downloaded rn. I got this after I remotely reset my MacBook through find my iPhone. Something to note is that I had downloaded softwares from the newest beta to Big Sur I think or the opposite, I can’t remember which one is newer

[rayanssemukaya]

Hi there. What happens when disk utility shows “no users on this volume” this is what I am experiencing right now.

[BrainHurricanes]

Thanks for this video. Hopefully helps a lot of people. We took our brand new M1 air back to the store an they are going to send it to Apple for repair (after calling support and trying to re-install for about 5 hours in total).

The problem was after using migrgation assistant, the new M1 macbook air would not take the correct password for some reason. You have any idea why it did not take a correct password ?
Then apple support guided us through for erasing the SSD and re-installing Big Sur.
But no matter what we tried (erase again, set correct local time, connect to other wifi device), after half an our an error message came "failed to personalize the software update".
The suggested bad connection, but our internet is pretty reliable over here.
So basically our brand new M1 air was bricked from our perspective. Thanks

[RobJonesRJ]

Hi, a very helpful video! However all the up until the hard reset, I didn’t have the volumes to erase my entire data. How do I fix this?

[Huntermouallem]

Hi I have gotten up to the point of reinstalling big sur and right after I click to download it to the hard drive it says “error no users available for authorization” what do I do to fix this?

[ShredzZ_SteamDeck_Gameplays]

Thanks for that! Also have a question about macOS base system, I want to sell my old MacBook and I can't erase it or unmount, is this disk have some personal data or something like that?