Wipe and Reinstall macOS

Step One: Boot into Mac Recovery

So macOS Recovery is one of the most clutch tools that Apple has created. It’s so smart they’ve made it pretty much built-in to all Macs. The utilities allow you to; restore from Time Machine, reinstall macOS, and repair or erase hard drives. Which covers the fundamentals of pretty much everything you need when troubleshooting your Mac. It’s also super simple to get into; all you need to do is press Command-R right after you press the power button and then let go once you see the apple logo or a spinning globe. This launches you right into the macOS Recovery.

Power On, Hold Command-R till Apple Logo

Step Two: Wipe Your Harddrive

ALWAYS REMEMBER TO BACKUP YOUR DATA TO AN EXTERNAL DRIVE BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING

Chances are your computer is probably super slow you just want a fresh start, but if for some reason you want to ATTEMPT to keep your files intact you can skip this step and jump to step three. But like I said most of us just want a fresh computer so we can rid of pretty much all issues.

Now, assuming that you’ve backed up your data, it is now safe to wipe your hard drive completely! If you’ve never done this before it’s actually super simple and is all done using the tool called “Disk Utility”. It’s pretty simple all you need to do is select your drive, press erase and name your drive (I use the default  “Macintosh HD”), select the format you want (usually “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and press erase again.

Erase Harddrive “Macintosh HD”

 

Now if for some reason you really want to make sure that all files are super securely deleted you’re going to want to go through extra security options. With mechanical hard drives, you need to rewrite it with blanks multiple times to ensure that all the files are untraceable the more time the better but I usually just recommend 2 times is enough because it’s like what are you trying to hide tho? Note: If you have an SSD you don’t need to worry about rewriting it multiple times because they use something called TRIM which ensures that your files are securely deleted.

Step Three: Reinstall macOS

Now that your drive is freshly wiped, your computer is pretty much good as new! All you need to press now is just Install macOS and select your drive (Macintosh HD) and you’re good to go! It’ll run the installation itself (note: it usually takes awhile I think mine took like an hour and a half?). Whenever it completes your Mac will restart itself and gets you to follow the steps to create your account. So you’re done!

Congratulations on wiping and reinstalling macOS your MacBook Pro 😀