hoakley January 6, 2023 Macs, Technology

Recovery mode problems and how to solve them

We normally try to start a Mac up in Recovery mode when there’s a problem. But when Recovery mode itself proves a problem, what can we do?

Can’t enter Recovery mode

Intel Macs can only enter Recovery and other startup modes when a functional keyboard is connected. If you’re using a wireless keyboard and can’t seem to get your Mac to start up in any of these modes, either use a USB wired keyboard or connect that wireless keyboard to your Mac using its charging lead, which turns it into a USB keyboard.

If normal Recovery fails, you can try its internet or remote version, by starting up with the Command-Option-R keys held. This is notoriously slow, as it first has to download a disk image of the recovery system before running it.

Apple silicon Macs rely on the Power button to enter Recovery and other startup modes. This simply involves pressing and holding the Power button until the display shows that options are being loaded. If that doesn’t happen, try Fallback recovery as detailed below. These may seem difficult at first, but are really far simpler. There is no internet or remote recovery, though.

Keyboard or language problems

At the top right of each screen in Recovery mode is a keyboard menu where you can select your preferred layout.

recovery101

Apple silicon Macs also let you pair or repair Bluetooth input devices, including keyboard, mouse and trackpad. This is accessed from the initial Options screen once Recovery has loaded. To pair devices, press the Power button three times in slightly less than three seconds. If you press too fast, or leave more than a second between presses, this may not work. If you’ve got it just right, the Bluetooth Setup Assistant should help you pair the device you want.

Network problems

When the main Recovery options window has loaded, you should see a Wi-Fi icon at the top right of the screen. If that doesn’t show a decent signal, use that menu to join the right network.

Run hardware diagnostics

On Intel Macs, you have to start up in Diagnostics using the D or Option-D keys held. The single D key runs Diagnostics from your Mac, while Option-D is your fallback if that doesn’t work, as a disk image will be downloaded from Apple’s servers, then run.

Apple silicon Macs here, and only here, use a keystroke command, although it’s not held during startup. To enter Diagnostics, at the first Options screen of Recovery hold Command-D until you’re told that Diagnostics is loading, then select your language, and the Diagnostics Loader app should load and offer to run diagnostics. If that doesn’t work, you’ll be prompted to Restart to Diagnostics using its menu, and so to try again. If that doesn’t succeed, start up in Fallback Recovery and try there.

recovery102

Fallback recovery

Rather than offering an internet Recovery mode, Apple silicon Macs usually have local Fallback Recovery available. This is normally installed in a hidden partition/container on the Mac’s internal SSD. Entering this mode is something of a knack: press the Power button twice in rapid succession, and with the second press keep the button pressed in until you see Options are loading.

Fallback Recovery is identical in every respect to normal Recovery, except for one: Startup Security Utility can’t be used to change boot security in most cases.

Restore in DFU mode

Apple silicon Macs have one last and ultimate fallback: if the worst comes to the worst, you can start the Mac up in DFU mode, connect it to another Mac running Apple Configurator 2, and from there you can restore its firmware and software completely. This will leave the Mac in as-new condition, as if it has just been unboxed for the first time. All user data is erased in this process, so you’ll then have to migrate from your most recent backup, when you have started your restored Mac up and personalised it. This is detailed fully in the Help book for Configurator, and requires a USB-C cable, not Thunderbolt, to connect the two Macs. If this seems too much for you to attempt, Apple stores and authorised service providers should be able to do this while you wait.

Support

Intel: An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Startup and login, and Apple
Apple silicon: An illustrated guide to Recovery on Apple silicon Macs, and Apple

21Comments

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1

EcleX on January 6, 2023 at 7:50 am

Awesome and useful reference article. Thanks!

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- 2
  
  hoakley on January 6, 2023 at 8:09 am
  
  Thank you.
  Howard.
  
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3

hhanche on January 6, 2023 at 10:10 am

This is indeed useful.

I recently had to help a friend of mine: His laptop got stuck during the upgrade to 13.0.1. Tried recovery next. At some point before we got the menu of choices, it asked us to select a language. But it was extremely sluggish, and it could take a couple minutes to scroll down, find the language we wanted, and select it. Then it got stuck again.

I knew about fallback recovery, but not how to activate it. I thought it was supposed to happen automatically, somehow, if regular recovery didn’t work. So we restored his machine in DFU mode instead. That went smoothly, as such things go (I had downloaded the ipsw file beforehand, and just dragged it into Apple Configurator). The machine now works again.

However, the problems with recovery mode remain. Which means he has no safety net other than his TM backup, and that takes hours to restore. Plus there is still quite a lot more to do in order to get back where you were.

I would have thought installing in DFU mode would also install a brand new recovery, but apparently that is not so, or that problem should have gone away.

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- 4
  
  hoakley on January 6, 2023 at 11:54 am
  
  Thank you. That’s a complex situation.
  During a macOS update, the paired Recovery volume in the current boot volume group is likely to be updated too. What would normally happen is that the existing primary Recovery is then copied to the hidden Recovery container on the internal SSD, to form the fallback, although that doesn’t always occur. If something went wrong at that stage, it’s not impossible that both primary and fallback Recovery could be damaged. The updater is designed to make that extremely unlikely, but it’s possible.
  When you restore in DFU mode, it replaces both primary and fallback Recovery. So whatever happened to primary Recovery beforehand, after the restore it should work fine, as new. Fallback Recovery is then a bit more of an unknown: back in Big Sur, before paired Recovery was used, fallback only became available after a macOS update, but now that paired Recovery is primary Recovery, I think fallback should be installed in its hidden container.
  From what you have described, I suspect there’s a fault in the logic board. It would be worth running Diagnostics and contacting Apple Support, but I suspect only a new logic board is going to fix that.
  Howard.
  
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  - 5
    
    hhanche on January 6, 2023 at 2:35 pm
    
    Indeed, I also expect a hardware problem at this point. I did not know until now how to get Diagnostics running on an M1 mac either, so thanks for that tip! My friend travels a lot, so it will take some time before we can schedule this test. But also, this is a work laptop, so it may be they can just give him a new one and send the old one off for servicing.
    
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6

hhanche on January 6, 2023 at 10:21 am

Forgot to say that his laptop is a M1 macbook pro.

One more thing, much more minor: On my own laptop (same model), when I boot into recovery mode, it starts with the wrong keyboard layout. And I cannot change it! Sure, I can pop up the giant menu of keyboard layouts and select the right one, but the selection doesn’t stick. Fortunately, the selected layout is similar enough to my own (Norwegian) that I can type the password without trouble.

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- 7
  
  hoakley on January 6, 2023 at 11:56 am
  
  I’m not sure what’s going wrong there, as I think the keyboard selection should be set in NVRAM, which you can’t tamper with or reset.
  Howard.
  
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8

hhanche on January 6, 2023 at 2:48 pm

Yes, the output of nvram -p shows “en-GB” for the keys “prev-lang:kbd” and “prev-lang-diag:kbd”. But that does not explain why I cannot select a different keyboard. The obvious remedy is to be careful what characters to use in my password.

Amusingly, on the regular login screen, the preselected keyboard is always Unicode Hex Input, but fortunately I can select a different one. I reboot and log in so rarely, I usually get a couple failed login attempts before I remember to change the keyboard.

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9

RalphB on January 7, 2023 at 1:35 am

Very helpful. But this made me laugh: “Entering [fallback recovery] mode is something of a knack: press the Power button twice in rapid succession, and with the second press keep the button pressed in until you see Options are loading.”
Then tap the heels of your ruby slippers three times and hope to proceed. 😉
Another example of hide-and-seek user interface, which is challenging always, but least useful in high-pressure situations like needing to use “fallback” recovery.

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- 10
  
  hoakley on January 7, 2023 at 6:44 am
  
  I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.
  Intel Macs have somewhere around 14 different startup key combinations to engage different modes. Even I don’t recall them all, and refer to my own chart in order to use them.
  Apple silicon Macs have exactly three startup modes, of which regular users will only ever need one. One.
  Tell me how that’s a “hide-and-seek user interface, which is challenging always”?
  Or do you really prefer around 14, all of which rely on your keyboard connecting correctly and functioning properly?
  Howard.
  
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  - 11
    
    hhanche on January 7, 2023 at 5:02 pm
    
    I obviously can’t speak for RalphB, but surely, discoverability could have been better, even though the current state is already a vast improvement over the Intel era?
    
    The first stage could be hardcoded in ROM: Long press the power button, and up comes a very simple dialog offering the three available startup modes. Pick one, and off you go.
    
    Now that could be problematic already, if it has to be displayed in every language known to humankind: So use some sort of icons instead. A picture of some tools for Recovery mode, for example. I am not sure what icons to use for the other two modes, but surely, the clever types in Cupertino can come up with something. There is plenty of screen space, so the icons won’t have to be all that minimal, but can provide plenty of hints.
    
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    - 12
      
      hoakley on January 7, 2023 at 5:58 pm
      
      No, thank you.
      I fear I haven’t explained these modes properly.
      DFU mode is headless, and intended to work when everything else has failed, to allow you to completely restore the Mac to as-new condition, regardless of what has been broken on its internal SSD. It isn’t a user mode: it’s intended for system admins, support folk, and similar who are likely to use Apple Configurator 2. Being a headless mode, requiring the Mac to boot sufficient to drive a display is not possible, nor desirable. Imagine all those curious users who’d select DFU mode to try it out, only to discover their Mac was dead, and the only way to change that is to force it to shut down?
      Fallback Recovery is a bonus, and I don’t think was part of the original design of Recovery. It’s opportunistic: if you happen to have a Fallback Recovery OS installed on that Mac, then it’s available in the very rare event that primary Recovery doesn’t. I’ve had five different Apple silicon Macs, from the DTK to the Studio, and use two much of the time. I have never had to use Fallback Recovery, although it’s something I regularly use for research etc. Again, this isn’t intended as a user mode, but might be there if you’re lucky. Its major difference is that Startup Security Utility in Fallback is non-functional. As a lot of those who use Recovery do so in order to use that, offering them a version that doesn’t work would be disaster.
      Because it’s opportunistic, there are no other differences from primary Recovery, indeed it’s very difficult to know which is which. So offering both in an easy-to-screw-up menu would only cause problems. It’s also important to remember that Fallback Recovery usually isn’t the same version as Primary Recovery, and that it works completely differently in Big Sur, compared with Monterey and later.
      So Fallback Recovery isn’t a user mode either.
      And to make every boot into Recovery force the user to go through the same menu, encouraging them to make the wrong choice, would be infuriating. Everyone would be asking why.
      Recovery Mode (primary) is a valuable and very friendly special mode. That’s all the ordinary user should know about, or use.
      Howard.
      
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  - 13
    
    hhanche on January 7, 2023 at 6:25 pm
    
    We’ve reached the deepest level of reply nesting, so I reply to this one instead. Sorry, I may not have been clear either: I certainly don’t think that DFU mode should be in that menu. That is way too technical for the average user, anyhow. And I did not mean to imply that users should see this menu on every boot, but only if they long press the power button – which now boots into Recovery.
    
    However, if fallback recovery is as prone to problems as you indicate, that certainly changes the picture. It should not be easily discoverable under those circumstances! I was unaware of this difficulty.
    
    Now, if it were possible to do a reinstall in DFU mode and keep the data volume intact, that would be real progress.
    
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    - 14
      
      hoakley on January 7, 2023 at 8:18 pm
      
      “if it were possible to do a reinstall in DFU mode and keep the data volume intact, that would be real progress.”
      I think I need to explain what restore does again. What you’re asking for is the demolition and replacement of a house, but you want to keep all the wallpaper inside it!
      Restore in DFU mode (there is no ‘reinstall’) completely wipes the internal SSD, which destroys all ‘firmware’, encryption keys, data, volumes, and containers. It then restores all those to exactly the same state as if that Mac were just being unboxed for use the first time. If it were to retain even one bit of data from the original SSD, then it would fail to restore it. There can be no option to retain the Data volume, or it wouldn’t restore it to its original condition.
      There is an option, for DFU mode, which only refreshes the ‘firmware’, and doesn’t wipe the SSD, but that’s intended if your Mac is having firmware problems. I’ve used that, back in the very first days of M1 Macs, and it’s really useful, but very different.
      Howard.
      
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15

RalphB on January 7, 2023 at 6:11 pm

Sorry I “lost” you, Howard. Not important. And certainly no slight intended. Mere-mortal users like me are very well aware of the iOS and MacOS widespread “hide-and-seek” interface issues. But I’m quite sure that for “computer people” who are accustomed to command-line tools and interfaces, it’s not-at-all uncommon to have to imagine in their heads which keys to press, for how long, and when, before magic menus appear to perform various tasks. No, of course I’m not suggesting making it more complex; I’m merely suggesting that designers who create these interfaces should be required (maybe “forced”) to watch videos of mere mortals trying to find out what-to-to-next to make a known feature appear. I see it with my wife all the time, but also with others, including those who have used computers for years, but have chosen to devote their mental energies to using their features rather than memorizing how to access them.
I realize, too, that this may be an application-specific phenomenon: I, for instance, only rarely use tools like Photoshop (or its wonderful Affinity replicas). So when I do need to use those apps, I find I must re-learn the user interface which I’m sure is second-nature to everyday users of those apps.
In the case of basic system operation tools, like Finder and Recovery, which all users must confront, I simply feel the secret-coded interfaces probably could be more apparent. Nothing more sinister than that.

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- 16
  
  hoakley on January 7, 2023 at 8:11 pm
  
  Thank you.
  So if you think this is a “secret-coded interface”, how should it be improved?
  Howard.
  
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  - 17
    
    RalphB on January 7, 2023 at 10:30 pm
    
    Thank you for asking. A few thoughts:
    
    Instead of a black/dark screen as the default for an “off” computer (not a “failed” or “headless” computer, just a “not on” computer)… I’d suggest a default screen containing a few simple prompts. These always-visible prompts might say things like
    – To start, press [icon of power key]
    – To launch Emergency Recovery Mode, press [same icon] twice and hold [or whatever the secret code is]
    – (maybe there should be others?)
    Apple already nods to the value of this idea with some of its login hints, when a user waits too long to enter a password, or has trouble entering a password… and some gray-on-black hints magically appear.
    These would not, of course, be visible when the computer has failed (though, see my further suggestions below). But users seeing them frequently when they open their computers could, at least, have some mental understanding that there ARE such magic codes, and users might even remember them when they’re needed.
    Similar instructions might even be embedded in Apple’s fancy login screens, which currently show abstract images of geography in California and a few login icons and password fields. The instructions needn’t destroy the aesthetic; they could be unobtrusive, but, again, frequent reminders of the secret handshakes needed in case of emergency. Another benefit of embedding them on this login screen is that users are already looking at the screen. These might also be visible during the otherwise static Apple logo-and-startup-thermometer screen. If Apple can make a logo and a thermometer appear, it can make some instructions appear.
    Another benefit could be that if the secret handshakes change (as you have already observed they do), the screen instructions could simultaneously be updated with software updates.
    
    Another possibility is to physically imprint a couple of such small emergency instructions on the keyboard bezel of the computer itself, maybe near the power key. Or etched unobtrusively in the screen glass itself, near the opower key, where they would be visible when the screen is “dead.” This could overcome the drawback I mentioned above when the computer is “headless,” but would introduce a new drawback: When Apple’s engineers decide to change the secret handshake (for whatever reason), the instructions would become outdated.
    
    Another possibility: A concise emergency instruction might even be imprinted on the power key itself (“Recovery: press-and-hold”), which could be “updated” with a sticker (not very elegant, but functional) if Apple decides to change the handshake. Or on the plastic lower bezel of a laptop, where the words “MacBook Pro” were once emblazoned.
    
    I know, Jony Ives would never approve of such design choices. But he’s gone. And using an emergency recovery handshake isn’t a very elegant concept to begin with, since it implies that computers might, actually, have startup emergencies.
    
    I’m sure Apple’s engineers could come up with more elegant and functional options. But the key idea is: to stop making users guess what to do in an emergency. Give them a helpful hint.
    
    Thanks for listening.
    
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    - 18
      
      hoakley on January 7, 2023 at 10:53 pm
      
      Thank you.
      There are no ‘secret handshakes’ for an Apple silicon Mac, and I simply have no idea where you have got that misapprehension from. The instructions for users are really simple:
      – to start, press the Power button
      – to start in Recovery mode, press and hold the Power button until the display tells you Recovery Options are loading.
      If you aren’t capable of remembering those two things, then what hope have you of using the Finder, which is far more complex?
      If you aren’t capable of those, then you won’t ever see any login screen, anyway.
      Howard.
      
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19

RalphB on January 8, 2023 at 12:48 am

Wow. You’re being pretty hard on me. I was completely unaware of the secret handshake for recovering an Apple silicon Mac, until YOU revealed it in your post above:
“Rather than offering an internet Recovery mode, Apple silicon Macs usually have local Fallback Recovery available. This is normally installed in a hidden partition/container on the Mac’s internal SSD. Entering this mode is something of a knack: press the Power button twice in rapid succession, and with the second press keep the button pressed in until you see Options are loading.”

If that’s not a “secret handshake” for something called “Fallback Recovery,” then I suspect we speak different languages. Or maybe your phrase “something of a knack,” is merely a different translation of “secret handshake?”

Clearly you don’t think this is worth Apple’s expending any effort. I thought you might, but I was wrong.

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- 20
  
  jimgbuffalo on January 8, 2023 at 5:36 am
  
  Perhaps it needs repeating: press button for ON ; press and hold for Recovery Mode. For the amnesiac there is a robust Help system built-in to the OS.
  
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- 21
  
  hoakley on January 8, 2023 at 3:51 pm
  
  “the secret handshake for recovering an Apple silicon Mac”
  It’s no secret. Apple provides a free utility to do it, Apple Configurator 2, whose documentation explains exactly how to set it up and use it. This procedure has also been described extensively by third-parties, including Mr. Macintosh and myself, since we got our first M1 Macs.
  However, this isn’t intended for regular users, but for the likes of system admins (who use it a lot), support technicians, and some advanced users.
  The knack involved in booting in Fallback Recovery is just what the word “knack” means: it’s a physical action which some find tricky to perform at first. Again, no secret, and nothing to do with handshakes either. Nor is it intended for the regular user for all the reasons that I’ve tried to explain.
  If you’d like to see how open these “secrets” are, click on the magnifying glass at the top right of a page here and search my articles for terms like “DFU” and “fallback”. You’ll get lots of hits going back to the early days of the M1.
  Howard.
  
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