The right way to use macOS startup keyboard instructions

The 16-inch MacBook Professional keyboard

Apple’s macOS has lengthy offered many key combos you’ll be able to maintain down when your Mac begins. When beginning up your Mac, you may wish to select a special Startup Disk, boot into Restoration mode, right into a Boot Camp Home windows quantity, or use one in every of Apple’s built-in Mac utilities. Startup key combos mean you can select what runs when your Mac boots.

For all startup key combos, the precise keys to press could also be completely different relying on whether or not you are utilizing an Apple Silicon-based Mac or an Intel Mac.

Startup Disk choice is completely different relying on whether or not you are utilizing an Intel-based Mac, or an Apple Silicon Mac.

On Intel Macs, should you maintain down the Choice key earlier than your Mac boots however after you energy it on, you may get a graphical startup disk menu choice which lets you interrupt startup to pick which quantity to start out up from. This menu lives in your Mac’s firmware and permits you to change Startup Disks in case your regular Startup Disk turns into unbootable for some motive:

Inner drives are listed first, then USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire, and different exterior drives. If any network-bootable drives can be found, they’re listed final.

On Apple Silicon Macs, the method is analogous, however as an alternative of holding down the Choice key, press and maintain the facility button till the amount listing seems.

You probably have an Intel Mac with an Apple T2 Safety Chip, chances are you’ll must set safety choices utilizing Startup Safety Utility first earlier than you need to use the boot Startup Disk function. This app permits you to set a firmware password, and designate should you can boot exterior drives.

The listing of bootable Startup Disks within the Startup Disk choice firmware menu is identical because the drive listing that seems in Startup Disk management panel in Settings.

In case you maintain down the Shift key after choosing a Startup Disk, however whereas urgent the Proceed or up-arrow button, your Mac will startup in Secure Mode.

To begin up into Apple Diagnostics on Apple Silicon Macs, which additionally lives in your Mac’s firmware, observe the identical process as Startup Disk Choice above, however as an alternative of continuous to a particular Startup Disk, press Command D to enter Diagnostics.

On Intel Macs, as an alternative of the earlier process, merely maintain down the D key on startup. This web page describes the diag process and a few end result codes.

If for some motive your Mac turns into unbootable, there’s additionally a built-in firmware Restoration Utility. In addition into Restoration Utility, on Intel Macs maintain down the Command R keys on startup till you see the Apple brand.

On Apple Silicon Macs, observe the identical process as in Startup Disk Choice, however as an alternative of choosing a drive besides from, choose the Choices gear icon. You may proceed to Restoration.

As soon as in Restoration, you may have 4 choices:

Most of those are self-explanatory apart from Reinstall macOS. In that case, the standard workflow is to pick the Disk Utility choice, erase a drive to reinstall macOS onto, then Stop Disk Utility, which takes you again to the Restoration menu.

Then choose Reinstall macOS to do a clear set up onto the drive you simply erased. Notice nonetheless that erasing a drive destroys all current knowledge on it and there is not any recovering the information. Watch out when utilizing this feature.

It’s potential to run Reinstall macOS instantly onto a beforehand used drive containing knowledge or a replica of macOS. The installer is sensible sufficient to not destroy any knowledge Apple beforehand created, and it is also sensible sufficient to protect any third occasion software program which will have been beforehand put in on a drive containing a replica of macOS.

However this does not assure you’ll be able to recuperate the drive, solely that you would be able to set up a brand new copy of macOS onto it to make it bootable.

To make use of one of many Restoration choices, choose it from the menu and click on Proceed. Apple has a full article on easy methods to startup into and use Restoration.

On Apple Silicon-based Macs, a number of different Restoration choices can be found:

1. Startup Safety Utilty
2. Terminal
3. Share Disk
4. Startup Disk

For full Restoration choices on Apple Silicon-based Macs, see this text.

You probably have an web connection, you can begin up in Web Restoration Mode, which is identical as Firmware Restoration Mode, besides that it hundreds the Restoration app from Apple’s servers over the web. This feature could take longer to start out, for apparent causes. To startup in Web Restoration Mode, maintain down Command+Choice+R or Command+Choice+Shift+R on startup.

To begin up in Secure Mode, merely maintain down the Shift key on begin up. Secure Mode boots macOS however disables most extensions, drivers, and different third occasion boot-time software program. This function is helpful if a specific piece of software program bought put in that hangs on startup.

This keystroke is barely out there on Intel-based Macs.

Secure Mode will be induced on Apple Silicon by urgent and holding the facility button till “Loading startup choices” seems. After you choose a quantity, press and maintain the shift key, then click on Proceed in Secure Mode.

That is the oldest of all Mac startup choices, going all the best way again to the Mac Plus. Higher referred to as “zapping-PRAM”, should you maintain down Command Choice P R on startup, all of the settings within the Normal, Mouse, and Keyboard System Settings are reset to their defaults.

This additionally resets issues resembling key repeat price, mouse pace, acceleration, and secondary mouse choices. Trackpad settings are additionally reset to their defaults. Some Sound settings can also be reset.

This feature is barely out there on Intel-based Macs. Apple has a lot extra data on the subject.

Use this feature with warning. Some Macs can get right into a state during which a particular chip on the motherboard known as the System Administration Controller (SMC) will get confused and refuses to permit begin up. Inner followers are additionally managed by the SMC.

On some Macs, unusual fan pace habits could seem when SMC wants resetting. In such circumstances, reset the SMC by holding down Shift-Management-Choice on startup.

Often a SMC reset is sufficient to get the Mac booting once more, assuming the Startup Disk hasn’t been corrupted. On some Macs to reset the SMC, you could have to first unplug, then re-plug the facility wire earlier than utilizing the important thing combo on startup.

On macOS variations sooner than Mojave, you’ll be able to maintain down Command S on startup and solely the default Administrator person account will likely be out there. This was primarily a safety function and is now not out there on macOS variations Mojave or later.

On Intel-based Macs, should you maintain down the T key on startup, your Mac will boot right into a particular mode known as Goal Disk Mode (TDM). This mode permits a Mac for use as if it was an exterior disk by one other Mac related by way of a USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt cable.

This function was initially developed on older Macs which had FireWire ports, however it nonetheless works right this moment. To make use of it, join two Macs by way of one of many talked about cables, restart the Mac you wish to use as a disk whereas holding down T, then open System Settings->Startup Disk on the opposite Mac and choose the Mac operating in TDM because the Startup Disk.

While you restart, the non-TDM Mac will boot over the cable into the TDM Mac’s drive. A particular disk icon will seem on the show of the TDM Mac. Apple has an article on easy methods to switch information between two Macs utilizing Goal Disk Mode. TDM is barely out there on Intel-based Macs.

For the same course of on Apple Silicon-based Macs, see this article.

Usually, whereas your Mac is booting and the Apple brand is being displayed, the FreeBSD-based Darwin core system is beginning up a bunch of system companies, {hardware}, drivers, extensions, and loading the core OS.

There is a hidden option to see precisely what Darwin is doing whereas booting. Maintain down Command V whereas beginning up. As an alternative of the Apple brand, you may see all of the Darwin startup system messages scroll by as every step is accomplished. Verbose Mode is barely out there on Intel-based Macs.

On Macs with an optical drive resembling an inside DVD-R/ROM drive, maintain down the C button to startup from the optical disk. The disk should be bootable and have a working working system on it with the intention to boot from it.

If you cannot begin up your Mac and have an non-bootable optical disk caught within the Mac’s inside optical drive, you’ll be able to eject the disk previous to startup by holding down the mouse/trackpad button, or the Eject or F12 key on the keyboard when powering on. This feature permits you to insert a special optical disk and take a look at booting once more.

If, for any motive you have to force-restart your Mac, you are able to do so by urgent the energy button twice: in case your Mac is already on, maintain down the energy button till it turns off.

As soon as off, press the energy button once more usually to restart. Laborious-restarting your Mac could end in elevated boot time the subsequent time you restart as macOS will run some disk examine or restore apps behind the scenes to verify the OS is reset to a secure, bootable state.

In case you had beforehand set a non-macOS quantity resembling a Home windows quantity to be your Startup Disk, you’ll be able to as an alternative drive a macOS quantity to be chosen by holding down the X key when beginning up. In case your Mac finds a bootable macOS quantity within the volumes listing, it would begin up from the primary bootable macOS quantity it finds.

You possibly can cease all Login Objects from operating on login, however provided that you maintain down the Shift key after clicking the Login arrow button on the Mac’s login display. Notice that that is completely different from Secure Mode above since you maintain down the Shift key instantly after clicking the Login button versus holding down Shift whereas powering in your Mac.

Early variations of Mac OS X Server included a networking expertise known as NetBoot and NetInstall. The server shipped with a separate NetBoot set up CD for including bootable options to a Mac OS X Server. The concept was to retailer frequent set up and boot photos of Mac OS X on a server, and customers might set up from and boot from these photos over a community.

It was an excellent thought, though it was somewhat sluggish.

Later, Mac OS X Server turned a standalone app for macOS which added all of the server options just by downloading and operating a single Server app from the Mac App Retailer. Apple discontinued Server and NetBoot assist in 2021. To begin up from a NetBoot Server on Macs which nonetheless assist it, maintain down the N key whereas beginning up.

On older Macs, to make a server-hosted NetBoot disk picture your Startup Disk, go to System Settings->Startup Disk and search for any disk icon with a globe on it:

NetBoot has largely been changed by a extra trendy common web boot expertise known as PXE which works on most platforms. Oddly, third occasion builders have stored NetBoot alive by recreating its options in some variations of PXE.

There’s additionally a contemporary NetBoot-like venture known as netboot.xyz which relies on iPXE for web booting. There’s additionally an older article from College of Utah written in 2007 on easy methods to set up and setup a NetBoot server.

In case you occur to be round an outdated “NewWorld” ROM-based Mac from the late 1990’s, you’ll be able to amaze your mates by exhibiting them easy methods to boot into Open Firmware. Beginning with the primary iMac and Energy Macintosh G3 computer systems in 1998, and till the transition to Intel CPUs, Macs used Open Firmware and newer, trendy ROMs known as NewWorld ROMs.

NewWorld contained many of the outdated Mac OS 9 OS within the ROMs on the motherboard, however used Open Firmware for the pre-OS boot sequence.

In addition a NewWorld ROM Mac into Open Firmware whereas powering on, maintain down Command+Choice+O+F. You’ll be left on the Open Firmware command immediate, however should know Open Firmware instructions with the intention to proceed.