If you’re planning to sell your Mac, give it away or simply want a fresh start, wiping your Mac’s data is important. The process of erasing all content and settings on your Mac may seem daunting at first, but it is essential to protect your information from falling into the wrong hands.

To make this process hassle-free and quick, here’s how to erase all content and settings on your Mac.

Step 1: Back up your data

Before proceeding, ensure to back up all your data to an external hard drive or cloud storage. This step is crucial as you’ll permanently erase all the data on your Mac, which cannot be undone.

Step 2: Turn off FileVault

FileVault is a security feature that encrypts your data on your Mac. You need to disable it as you can’t erase the hard disk until FileVault is turned off. To do this, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault and click on the padlock at the bottom left, enter your password and click ‘Turn Off FileVault’.

Step 3: Sign out of iCloud

If you use iCloud services such as Find My Mac on your Mac, sign out before erasing it. To do this, click on the Apple menu > System Preferences > Apple ID > Overview, then click on ‘Sign Out.’

Step 4: Restart in Recovery mode

Restart your Mac and hold down ‘Command + R’ until the Apple logo appears. This will boot your Mac into Recovery Mode. Once in Recovery mode, click on Disk Utility > Continue.

Step 5: Erase your hard drive

In the Disk Utility, choose your Mac’s main hard drive and click on ‘Erase.’ A drop-down menu will appear, choose ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ as the format, and click ‘Erase.’ This will wipe all data from the hard drive.

Step 6: Reinstall MacOS

After erasing your hard drive, click on ‘Reinstall MacOS’ and follow the on-screen instructions to reinstall MacOS onto your Mac.

Step 7: Restore data

Once MacOS is reinstalled, you can restore your data from the Time Machine backup you made earlier.