There comes a time in every Mac’s life when you need to get rid of it, whether by passing it on to someone else, or sending it for recycling or as a trade-in. This article explains what you should do, and what you should avoid.

First, there are those steps you need to take to ensure that it doesn’t take with it anything that you’ll miss. Ensure that it’s fully backed up, and that you have stored additional copies of all documents that might be important in archives. One store you might forget are its keychains, that could contain old passwords that you might need to recover in the future. While you may well keep current passwords in your keychain shared in iCloud, older ones might remain, particularly in that Mac’s login keychain. That should be in its backup, but a second copy could be wise, and will include any security certificates that you might not have used recently.

Next come third-party apps and subscriptions that need to be signed out or transferred. Check carefully through its Applications folder to ensure that you haven’t forgotten any that are still valid. Among those is the need to deauthorise that Mac for Apple media, something you should do using one of its media apps such as Music or TV, or iTunes if it’s running an older version of macOS.

If it’s an Intel Mac and you have enabled its firmware password, start it up in Recovery and disable that before going any further.

What you do next depends on whether it’s a modern Mac, with either a T2 or Apple silicon chip. If it’s older, then you have a long list of tasks that can only be completed manually. These include:

1. disable Find My Mac and Activation Lock
2. sign out of iCloud
3. sign out of iMessage
4. reset NVRAM
5. unpair all Bluetooth devices
6. erase the Mac and, if you’re passing it on to someone else, install macOS
7. remove that Mac from your account in Apple ID settings.

If it has a T2 or Apple silicon chip, those are all made simpler and more robust using Erase All Content and Settings (EACAS) and its Erase Manager. Start this off from System Settings > General > Transfer or Reset > Erase All Content and Settings…. In older versions of macOS that still use System Preferences, open them and this is offered as a command in the app menu there. Once that’s done, all that remains is to remove that Mac from your account in the Apple ID pane.

EACAS handles all the signing out that’s required, and disables Find My Mac and Activation Lock for you. But most importantly it ensures that no one can access the contents of its Data volume, by destroying the encryption keys used to encrypt that volume. Without those keys, it’s practically impossible for anyone to break that encryption and recover any of the protected data.

When you’re performing this manually instead of using EACAS, this is the most problematic step. With hard disks, the traditional solution is to perform a Secure Erase using Disk Utility, but that neither works nor is it wise when trying to clean an internal SSD.

If your Mac is going for recycling, you’ll also probably want to physically destroy its internal storage once everything else is complete and it has been shut down, powered off, and disconnected from the mains power supply. That can be a thoroughly satisfying experience too.

In the past, some users have recommended deleting the .AppleSetupDone file in /var/db/, which then caused the Setup Assistant to launch when that Mac was next started up, to create a new local user. It has also been used to add another admin user, and for other purposes. For Macs that are going to be used by someone else, this has never been a wise move, and Apple has stopped that from working in macOS Sonoma 14.0 and later. It’s far better to use EACAS to reset that Mac then run Setup Assistant when it next starts up, or to open Users & Groups settings if you just want an additional user.

Checklist

• Back up
• Additional copies of important documents, keychain(s)
• Sign out from or transfer third-party apps
• Deauthorise for Apple media
• Disable firmware password (Intel)
• Erase All Content and Settings (T2, Apple silicon), or manual list above
• Remove from Apple ID account
• Physically destroy internal storage (if recycling).