Recovery reinstall, using an Installer app, or a bootable installer, or with an Apple silicon Mac in DFU mode? What the choices are, and how best to do it.
DFU
When should you put your Mac into DFU mode, hook it up to another Mac running Configurator, and revive or restore it?
Is that Mac completely dead due to a severe failure, or could it just be in DFU mode? They aren’t easy to distinguish on most Macs.
Apple silicon Macs are better-equipped to prevent and deal with disaster. Restoring in DFU mode is extremely unusual, and more powerful than anything you can do with an Intel Mac.
If there’s a problem, you may try Recovery mode. What do you do when that proves to be a problem? Solutions for Intel and Apple silicon Macs.
Should you be scared of ‘bricking’ your Mac? Just what does it mean, and what could you do about it? Don’t panic: it’s not a dragon to be slayed.
Erase your M1’s internal storage in Recovery, reinstall macOS and you could see an error in which it failed ‘to personalize the software update’. That’s not easy to fix, as explained here.
macOS updates sometimes don’t work out right. What can you do to revert to the previous release? Did I hear you mention snapshots?
M1 Macs don’t use that warren of startup key combinations, but a logical structure of choices, mostly when starting up in Recovery Mode. Here are the full details.