Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and i wanted to show you how to format and reset an m1 macbook
air macbook pro mac mini or any future apple silicon as it's a little bit different as far
as removing everything as compared to before now the first thing is make sure you have a backup
because when we're done this will remove all information all accounts all information will
be removed and erased from your mac so make sure you have a backup before you get started
now we need to make sure this mac is up to date with a fairly current version because there were
problems with early versions reinstalling mac os to do this click on the apple in the upper left
and go to about this mac make sure that you're on version 11.2 or newer as earlier versions
sometimes had problems reinstalling the os and would have an error if you're on a newer version
this shouldn't happen if you need to update just click on software update now let's go ahead and
close this and the first thing we need to do is remove our accounts from the device
so to do that go to system preferences or you can get there the same way by clicking on the apple in
the upper left and going to system preferences either way will bring you to this screen
once you're at the screen go ahead and click on apple id we need to now sign out of our apple id
what you need to do is click on overview once you're on overview go ahead and click sign out
now here's where we'll need to make sure that we have our passwords when we get to the next step
so on this step we need to uncheck these since we don't want to keep a backup of anything we want
to completely erase the drive and then go ahead and click continue it's going to take a moment
and it's going to ask me if i want to delete everything from the mac i do
so i'll go ahead and click delete from mac we'll have to click it one more time just to confirm
and then we'll have to put in our password this is our icloud password this disassociates us
from icloud and also turns off find my mac so go ahead and put in your password after you put
in your password click continue and then you'll have to put in the password of the mac itself
the same password you would use to log into the mac when you turn it on for example once you have
that password in place go ahead and click ok it will take just a moment and it will sign out of
everything we do need to sign out of one more thing if you're using messages for example we
need to sign out of that so go ahead and click on messages within messages click on messages
in the upper left then click on preferences under preferences you'll see a panel here or a
preference panel and you'll see at imessage click on add imessage now we'll need to sign out here so
go ahead and click sign out click sign out again and now we're signed out of imessage now we're
good to go to reset the mac and erase everything so to do that go to the apple click shut down and
go ahead and click shutdown again we'll wait for this to shut down it will take just a moment and
then we'll get to restoring and erasing everything now that the mac is shut down on an m1 mac all we
need to do or an apple silicon mac is press the power button but keep your finger on it keep it
pressed down in order to get to the settings that we need so go ahead and press it and keep holding
and you'll see it's booting up and it says continue holding for startup options so we'll
continue holding it now we'll let go and it says loading startup options so we'll wait for
it to load the startup options and then we can continue now you'll see your drive here mine is
just named untitled yours might say macintosh hd this can be named whatever you'd like but we need
to click on options so click on options and click continue it'll take just a moment to boot to that
once we're booted to the options it'll say examining volumes and then select a user you know
the password for if you don't know the password you can click on forget or forgot all passwords go
ahead and click on your name click next and then put in your password this is the same password you
would log into your mac with we'll go go ahead and click continue and now we have our options
to erase everything so we have restore from time machine reinstall mac os big sur safari and disk
utility click on disk utility and then click continue now the easiest way to do this it'll
examine our volumes here and the easiest way to do this is click on your drive on the left it will
be the one highlighted there should also be one named data but just click on the highlighted one
then go ahead and click erase now keep in mind this will remove everything from the device
now we can select the format we want it to be in in this case i'll just leave it as default
but you could select any of these as far as apfs encrypted you can also encrypt this later using
file vault but i just leave it on apfs for now and then on the left click erase volume group
so we'll click that and then click erase mac and then you'll have to click it one more
time erase mac and restart so we'll do that this will take a moment and it will reboot
once the mac reboots you'll see this screen where it says language you'll
select your language and then click the arrow in the bottom right we'll take just a moment
now we'll say activate mac and select a wi-fi network from the menu or attach a network cable
to proceed so in the upper right you've got your network click on that and then you'll need to sign
into your wireless network or connect a network cable once you're connected to your network
you'll see this icon change to a steady icon in the upper right and it will activate the mac
give it just a moment now it says your mac is activated we'll click exit to recovery utilities
and now we can click reinstall mac os big sur we'll click on this and then click continue
now it says to set up installation of macos big sur click continue we'll go ahead and click
continue now we'll have to agree to the license we'll click agree and then you have to click agree
again to proceed and now we have our drive so now we just click on the drive and click continue to
get this installed it's going to warn you to plug in your computer if it's not plugged in already
make sure you have a full battery if you're not plugging it in but then go ahead and click
continue now it tells you the amount of time it will take it says one hour and three minutes this
is dependent on your internet connection as well and it will usually drop down i think it
takes about 30 minutes for me on this connection but it varies depending on what type of internet
connection you have so we'll wait for this to install and then we'll come back now the mac
has been completely restored and all data has been erased and all accounts are no longer associated
with this mac and so you're good to go to either give it away return it or maybe sell it and
everything is safe and secure no more data is on this device and so hopefully this helped you out
if you haven't subscribed already though please subscribe and if you enjoyed the
video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron i'll see you next time