How to access Recovery Mode on a Mac M1

If you're a longtime macOS user, you're probably familiar with the keyboard shortcut commonly used to access Recovery Mode on a regular Intel-chip Mac. It is to hold Command + R while the machine is in the boot process. However, this won't work if you're on a Mac using an Apple Silicon CPU (Chip M1 or later).

So how do you access Recovery Mode on Macs running on a recent M1 ARM chip? Just follow these steps.

First, if your Mac M1 is working, turn it off. Next, press and hold the Power / Touch ID button on the device to turn it back on.

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If you are using a standalone Mac, press and hold the Power button on the back of the machine.

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Keep holding the Power button until you see the words ' Loading Startup Options ' appear on the screen.

In a few seconds, you should see your Mac's boot drive and the ' Options ' button appear. Click this ' Options ' button , then click ' Continue '.

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Now, the system will ask you to choose a user account. Select the account you want to log in to and click the ' Next ' button .

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Here, you need to enter the password for the respective user account you just selected.

You are now in Recovery Mode.

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At this point, everything will return to normal as on a Mac using a traditional Intel chip. Here, you can choose to reinstall the operating system, restore from Time Machine, use Disk Utility to reformat the system, and of course you can also use Safari to browse the web.

Once it's done, you'll have to boot into macOS. To do this, click the Apple button from the menu bar and select the ' Restart ' option.

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In just a few seconds, your Mac will restart automatically, and you should see the familiar login screen.

Jessica Tanner

Update 29 December 2020