When System Preferences opens, ignore the window that appears and look at top of the screen again. In the menu that appears, select “System Preferences.” To get started, click the Apple icon on the menu bar in the upper-left corner of the screen. If you have a Mac that uses Apple Silicon or has a T2 Security Chip running macOS Monterey or later, you can quickly wipe your Mac using System Preferences. RELATED: How to Update Your Mac and Keep Apps Up to Date How to Erase all Content and Settings on a Newer Mac

Luckily, we’ve laid out how to do that in a separate article aimed at older machines, but we will also cover the process briefly below.Īlternatively, if the Mac you want to wipe includes a T2 chip or Apple Silicon and supports upgrading to macOS Monterey or later, you could perform the OS update first before using the “Erase All Content and Settings” feature to wipe your Mac. If you have a Mac running a version of macOS older than macOS Monterey-or your Mac lacks the hardware features mentioned above-you’ll need to perform a more complex series of steps to factory reset your Mac, such as reinstalling a copy of macOS from Recovery mode.

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