Such data, along with outdated software may cause your Mac to slow down, or even crash at some point. Hold down the Option key immediately when starting up your Mac.Īs everyone knows, any electronic device creates tons of temporary data. So here’s another startup combination for your fingers:
If you have an external drive with a bootable macOS installer on it, this may be the one to try and load your system from. The Startup Manager allows you to pick the different source from which to load your operating system. Since we’re trying to boot your Mac in an alternative way, you can use Startup Manager for that.
You can get around that if you press Option + Command + R upon startup - this will install the latest macOS version on your Mac.
It basically overrides some startup settings when set to Full Security level. This chip ensures that you only install macOS from a reputable source.
Newer Mac models (released after 2018) come equipped with a special piece of hardware, namely, T2 security chip. Your Mac has a T2 security chip set into Secure Boot mode. Recovery partition on your drive is corrupted or erased. The keys on your keyboard are not functioning (have become dirty, etc.) Your macOS version is pre Sierra: Recovery options only originated on that macOS. There are several reasons why Command R is not working, and your Mac would not start up in the Recovery mode. Note: Some keyboards have the Alt key instead of Option. Hold down the startup combination until the globe icon appears. It will repair your Mac by reinstalling the original macOS version that came with your computer. Internet Recovery protocol looks like this. So when the standard Command + R combination doesn’t work, you can try one of these: There is another combination of keys that will boot your Mac into Mac Internet Recovery mode. But when none of these options is available to you, you can repair your system via Mac internet recovery. In most cases, your Mac should be able to repair itself either from a Time Machine backup or a reserve macOS copy that is stored on your drive (the first 2 options). This menu (normally accessible via Command + R) offers a number of tools to repair your system. macOS Utilities was intended for critical situations, like system crashes or a hard-drive that’s been accidentally erased. Mac Recovery vs other optionsįirst, you need to know that Mac Recovery is a part of macOS Utilities menu. We’ll also give you a few alternatives to Internet Recovery when your Mac doesn’t work. In this article, we’ll explain why this is and why Command + R is not working in some cases. But what if you keep pressing these two keys and nothing happens? To enable this mode, it’s stated everywhere that you need to hold down Command + R. Not all these functions work with every version of Mac OS X or with every hardware upgrade, but they are the most common.Mac Recovery is the last-ditch solution to resurrect an unusable Mac.
The following key combinations can be held as your Mac is powering on: While you cannot run any code from Terminal or otherwise to set an order of boot devices, you can easily control where your Mac boots via keyboard commands. The following is a more comprehensive list of the keyboard commands you know and many you may not.Ī recent tweet from reminded me of several boot commands I've learned over the years, so I thought a more comprehensive list would be useful for MacFixIt readers.
Many users are aware of some boot commands for Mac OS X that provide different functionality for your system.