How To Erase A MacBook Or Mac: Restore To Factory Settings - Macworld

You know you need to erase the Mac before you pass it on, but before you delete everything there’s some more admin to do first.

Before you begin the process of wiping your Mac it’s worth signing out of the following to avoid headaches later on:

Sign out of Find My: Open System Preferences and click on your name in the Apple ID/iCloud section. Scroll down to the Find My Mac section and click on Options. Click on Turn Off beside Find My Mac and Fins My network.

Sign out of iMessage: Open Messages on your Mac and click on Messages in the menu bar. Click on Settings/Preferences > click on the iMessage tab > Sign out.

Sign out of your Music/iTunes account: You will need to deauthorise your Apple Music and/or iTunes Store account and log out. This is important because you can only use up to five Macs to play music that are locked to your account. Open the Music app > Click on Account > Click on Authorisations > De-authorise this computer. Then click on Account > Sign Out.

Sign out of your TV account: As with the Music app you have a limit to the number of devices that can play movies you have bought from the iTunes Store, so you should sign out of your account in the TV app. Open the TV app > Click on Account > Click on Authorisations > De-authorise this computer. Then click on Account > Sign Out.

Sign out of iCloud: Open System Preferences and click on your name in the Apple ID/iCloud section. Then sign out. When it asks if you want to keep a copy of the iCloud data just deselect everything (of course make sure you back that information up somewhere). Then click Continue and wait for it to sign out (which may take a while). If you use iCloud Photo Library you’ll be asked if you want to download photos to the Mac (you don’t unless you want to make a back up of this cloud based library). Finally enter your Apple ID Password to confirm, and enter the password for the Mac.

Another way to be absolutely sure that none of your personal settings remain on the Mac is to reset the NVRAM. We discuss how to do that here: How to reset the NVRAM, PRAM, and SMC on any Mac.