When it’s time to part with a Mac, the first thing you should do is perform a factory reset. Maybe you’re selling your MacBook Pro, or passing it on to a family member. Or maybe your MacBook is old and slow, or simply stuck in a bootloop. If you have the latest MacBook with Apple Silicon processors, or an older MacBook Pro with Intel chips and Apple’s T2 Security Chip, the process of resetting a Mac is as simple as it is an iPhone. Erase Assistant takes care of the rest for you.

However, if you don’t have access to your Mac, or it’s an older machine with an Intel processor that doesn’t have Apple’s T2 chip, you’ll need to do this manually using macOS Recovery and the old Disk Utility app. We’ll walk you through both options below.

If you have a MacBook, iMac, or Mac mini with an Apple Silicon chip (M1 or later), or if you’re using a MacBook Pro with a T2 security chip (find all supported models here ), you can use Erase Assistant to securely erase all data from your Mac. To do this, you’ll need to be running macOS Monterey or later. If you’re running macOS Ventura or later, the steps are a little different.

Before you do anything else, it’s important to back up your data. Back up your photos and documents to iCloud or other cloud storage services, or transfer them to an external storage drive.