Hello, my name's Tom and this is Proper Honest Tech!
Chances are, if you own a Mac, there will come a time where you'll want to wipe
it of all your data, either because you're selling it, giving it away or trading it in.
If you've never done this before, and if you're not especially computer-confident, this can all
seem a bit daunting, but I promise you, it's dead easy. So in this video, I'm going to
walk you through the process of me getting my 2018 Intel Macbook Pro 13 inch laptop ready to be sold.
Important note, this process is for Intel Macs only, not Apple Silicon Macs.
Before we start, don't be tempted to skip this and just pass your Mac on with all of your data still
onboard. Your new buyer is going to want a clean Mac, but more importantly, the last thing you want
to do is give someone a computer that's full of your photos, your personal data, possibly even
your credit card information. Do the right thing, take a few minutes and get the computer wiped.
We're going to be going through three stages today.
Disassociating the Mac from our iCloud account.
Wiping the hard drive.
Reinstalling the latest version of Mac OS.
OK, let's start.
Firstly, ensure that you have a backup of your computer. I've essentially skipped this step,
as I already have my M1 Macbook Air setup and have been using it for the past month,
so I'm confident there's nothing left on this computer that I want to keep a copy of,
everything that I need is either on my new computer,
or in the cloud. But if you've not done that, do start off by backing up any crucial files.
Then we're going to sign out of iCloud. To do this,
head to the Apple menu in the upper left of the screen, and choose System Preferences.
Then choose Apple ID. In the left hand menu, choose Overview, and then choose Sign Out.
If you're asked about keeping anything on the Mac,
I generally say no, because we're going to be wiping the hard drive anyway, and again
if you're using iCloud to back everything up, you don't need to worry about this.
Next up, for some reason, you need to individually sign out of iMessage,
that stays logged in as you even when you've removed iCloud from your computer.
So to do this, open up imessage, go to Preferences,
click iMessage and then choose Sign Out.
Next up, it's good practice to reset your NVRAM.
This is where your computer stores all kinds of specific settings related to your computer,
which the firmware has access to even before Mac OS begins booting. Security settings, screen
resolution, time zone information are all the kind of things that can be found here, specific to this
computer. It's good practice therefore to reset the NVRAM, prior to passing this computer on.
To do that, reboot the machine. As soon as the screen goes dark for the reboot, press
and hold the Command, Option, R and P keys on your keyboard. You'll likely have to hold your hands a
bit awkwardly to achieve this, and you'll need to keep them pressed for between 10 and 20 seconds.
Once done, the computer will reboot again, and your NVRAM will be reset. Easy.
So, we're almost done with the removal of ourselves from this machine. The last step is
to wipe Mac OS from the hard drive. To do this, we're going to reboot the machine once more.
Say goodbye to your Mac, because this is the last time you're going to see it the way that it is!
When your Mac reboots, a bit like we did with the NVRAM, we need to hold some keys down on
startup. This time, it's just Command and R, again for around 10 seconds. The computer
will open in Recovery Mode, which looks significantly different to the main Mac OS.
If you're asked to choose a user for the computer that you know the details of, do so by inputting
the password. Then, in the Utilities window, choose Disk Utility and Continue.
Select Macintosh HD in the bar on the left. Then choose Erase over here on the right.
The Mac will automatically suggest a Name and Format for you - Macintosh HD and APFS. Stick
with those, and then choose Erase Volume Group. If that button isn't visible, just choose Erase.
You might be asked to input your password once more.
Once the erase has completed, if you have any other internal volumes showing on the left,
other than Macintosh HD Data, you can click on them and use the minus button to remove them.
Close out of Disk Utility, to return to the main Recovery screen.
Now, you have an essentially empty computer, so the final job is to reinstall the latest Mac OS.
Do this by choosing Reinstall MacOS, and following the on-screen instructions.
Then buckle up, as this might take a while. My computer warned me I was
in for a 2 and a half hour wait, although it only took about 40 minutes in reality.
Once done, and after numerous reboots, your computer should be back to factory settings.
It's now ready for you to sell, trade or giveaway!
Hopefully these steps worked for you. If you hit a problem,
much as I do welcome questions in the comments, I would recommend reaching out to Apple with
specific problems as they can likely help you much better than I, or any other commenter can.
So there you go - I hope you found this video useful, if you did do please consider leaving
me a like, and subscribing to the channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.