Recover Recovery

Recovery mode is a relatively recent addition to macOS. For the first decade or so of Mac OS X, if you needed to check and repair the boot disk, or perform other surgery, you started up in Single User Mode (SUM), with the Command and S keys. That was supplemented in Mac OS X Lion by Recovery Mode, engaged by starting up an Intel Mac with the Command and R keys held, and that has since been enhanced, extended and has finally replaced all other startup modes in Apple silicon Macs, where it’s entered using the Power button. But what if that doesn’t work?

Apple silicon Macs

Because there’s no other option, Apple silicon Macs normally have two Recovery Modes, both triggered using the Power button:

for primary or paired Recovery, press and hold the Power button until a message on the display reports the Mac is entering Options;
for fallback Recovery, use a short press first, then press and hold the Power button until entering Options is displayed. The rhythm of pressing the Power button is ‘di-dah’.

Paired recovery

If your Mac is still running, you can force it to shut down by holding the Power button until it does. You can also use this to force a laptop Mac to shut down instead of starting up when its lid is opened.

Then disconnect all non-essential peripherals, leaving just the Mac, any required display, a mouse or trackpad, any wired Ethernet connection, and its keyboard. Try again by pressing and holding the Power button until the display shows that it’s loading or entering Options.

This should load its primary or Paired Recovery system, from the Recovery volume that’s paired with the last version of macOS that your Mac was running before it was shut down. If that’s installed on an external disk, then paired Recovery should also be loaded and run from the copy on that external disk. If that doesn’t work, the next step is to try Fallback Recovery, so shut your Mac down again by pressing and holding the Power button.

Fallback recovery

Apple silicon Macs maintain a second Recovery system in the Recovery volume in a hidden container named Apple_APFS_Recovery on their internal SSD, for use as a fallback. This normally contains a slightly older version of the Recovery system. For example, in a Mac running macOS Tahoe 26.6.1, paired Recovery should also be version 26.6.1 but fallback Recovery might be version 26.3.

The other major difference between the two Recovery systems is that Startup Security Utility is only available in paired Recovery. If you try using that in fallback recovery, you’ll be told that it isn’t available. This means you can’t change Boot Security settings from fallback Recovery, but otherwise it should be able to do anything that paired Recovery can.

Device Recovery Assistant

If your Mac has been updated to run Tahoe or later, it can run an extension to Recovery confusingly named Device Recovery Assistant. The distinctive feature is its plus-in-a-circle icon. Although you can opt to run this through the main Recovery menu, your Mac could enter Device Recovery Assistant in the event of a problem occurring during startup.

Navigation

Most of us are unfamiliar with Recovery modes and their layout. The diagram below should help you navigate them.

Further details are illustrated in my guide to Recovery on Apple silicon Macs.

Refresh firmware

If neither Paired nor Fallback Recovery are available, the best way to restore them for an Apple silicon Mac is to put that Mac into DFU mode, connect it to another recent Mac using a USB-C cable, and use that Mac to refresh their firmware. This is explained in more detail here. Refreshing the firmware isn’t destructive, and should leave both the macOS System and your Data volume intact. If that still doesn’t work, the only remaining option is to perform a full restore, which wipes everything on the internal SSD.

Which Recovery?

You may notice that Fallback Recovery is significantly slower to handle user authentication, and may display an ‘authorisation succeeded’ window before proceeding to the main Recovery window. There are two ways to tell for certain which Recovery mode your Mac is running:

In Terminal, type sw_vers to see the macOS version. If that’s the same as the normal version of macOS on that Mac, then it’s most probably Paired Recovery; if it’s an older version, then it’s Fallback Recovery.
Try opening Startup Security Utility. If it’s Fallback Recovery, you should be informed that it’s not available; if it opens correctly, then that should be Paired Recovery.

Rarely you may start your Mac up in Paired Recovery, only to find that Startup Security Utility isn’t available. This seems to occur if you’ve just had the Mac running in Fallback Recovery, or when it hasn’t run regular macOS since starting up from cold. Either way, the solution is to restart it normally, leave it running for a few minutes, shut it down, then after 30 seconds or so start it up in Paired Recovery again.

You can also check the versions of Recovery currently installed on your Mac using my free utility Mints. Its Software Update button lists those versions, with sfrProductVersion as Paired Recovery, and recoveryOSProductVersion as Fallback Recovery. You don’t get to choose those, as they’re set by Software Update.

Intel Recovery

If your Intel Mac is still running, perhaps displaying a folder with a question mark ? superimposed, force it to shut down by pressing the Power button until it does.

Then disconnect all non-essential peripherals, leaving just the Mac, any required display, a mouse or trackpad, any wired Ethernet connection, and its keyboard. If the latter is wireless, connect it to the Mac using its charging lead so that it’s no longer reliant on Bluetooth. Then try again using the Command and R keys.

That should enable it to start up from the secure disk image in its paired Recovery volume, and enter local Recovery mode. If it doesn’t, it suggests that isn’t available, and the only way to enter Recovery is using its Internet or remote version, holding the Command, Option and R keys during startup. This is notoriously slow, as it first has to download a disk image of the recovery system before running it.

Rarely, the Recovery volume becomes deleted, or the secure disk image it should contain gets removed. Unfortunately the only means of restoring it is to perform a macOS update, and even then some Macs seem unable to recover Recovery without the boot volume group being deleted and installed from scratch, best performed when booted from an external disk. Unfortunately, on Intel Macs with T2 chips, you might need to enable that using Startup Security Utility, which is, of course, only available in Recovery. You may now wish to scream.

Intel Recovery options are:

local Recovery, Command-R;
remote latest Recovery, Command-Option-R, for latest version of macOS compatible with that Mac, over the internet;
remote original Recovery, Command-Option-Shift-R, to reinstall the version of macOS that shipped with the Mac, over the internet.

5Comments

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1

EcleX on August 18, 2026 at 6:53 am

Thanks another useful reference article.

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  hoakley on August 18, 2026 at 7:20 pm
  
  You’re most welcome.
  Howard.
  
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joethewalrus on August 18, 2026 at 9:42 am
I learned, after a few texts from my aunt/roommate while I was out Thursday night, that iPadOS 26 recovery is remarkably similar. She uses her iPad more than I use all my Macs combined, so this was, in its way, a life-altering emergency.
Major difference between mobile and the Mac: iCloud backup came in handy. Check your Time Machine backups, Mac people!
- your Mac (iPad) could enter Device Recovery Assistant in the event of a problem occurring during startup. Yes, this was the first clue something was wrong, with the same plus in a circle icon from the Mac version. Notably, it requested a Wi-Fi password. I think the Mac usually has this cached in nvram of some sort while doing recovery, but I could be wrong. While out, I didn’t trust that my aunt wasn’t being phished, so gave her the password to join my special network isolated for IoT devices. I forgot I have it throttled to 1 MB/s. Oops. That ended up not mattering though; she texted back the iPad was in a boot loop.
- …put that Mac into DFU mode, connect it to another recent Mac using a USB-C cable, and use that Mac to refresh their firmware. This is explained in more detail here. Refreshing the firmware isn’t destructive, and should leave both the macOS System and your Data volume intact. If that still doesn’t work, the only remaining option is to perform a full restore, which wipes everything on the internal SSD. This is exactly where we ended up when I arrived home, thankful for an apartment full of Macs. I don’t know if it’s called DFU mode on mobile devices, since it’s roughly the same process since the iTunes days, but I booted the iPad into recovery mode while USB-C connected, and from it’s special Finder window downloaded the latest firmware onto my Mac Mini. Then, the Mac said it was attempting to restore and update the iPad without data destruction. I believe this is new, and possibly indicative that the iPad has a data container and an SSV similar to the Mac. That failed, and we ended up back at the Device Recovery Assistant boot loop, that plus icon starting to really get on my nerves. (This time I connected to my “real” wifi network.) Once more on the Mac, opting for full data destruction and restore, the iPad booted normally as a factory fresh device, and thankfully accepted a 16-hour old iCloud backup.
This was my first time I can recall seeing Device Recovery Assistant on anything outside of a screenshot. The whole time I was thinking “This is exactly how Howard has described it in all those articles about the Mac.”

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  hoakley on August 18, 2026 at 7:22 pm
  
  Thank you, Joe. How fascinating! I’m not allowed to use my wife’s iPad except under supervision, so I’ll have to see if I can find an excuse for exploring its Recovery mode.
  Howard.
  
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    joethewalrus on August 18, 2026 at 7:57 pm
    
    Developer Tools / Xcode has excellent iPad emulators, but I don’t know if they can be put into Recovery Mode. That might be the ideal playground, if it can be done.
    
    My iPad Pro 2019 is on the life-ends-at-iPadOS-26 list, so it’s time for me to explore if I want to try Apple’s new lease program, buy a cheaper iPad, or become a Mac and Phone only user for a while. I like the iPad, but I don’t love it as I once did. Apple Silicon MacBook Pros are too delightful. (Or is that MacBooks Pro?)
    
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