What to try if your Mac doesn’t enter Recovery Mode when you want it to. For Apple silicon Macs, there’s Fallback Recovery, while Intel Macs have two forms of internet or remote recovery to choose from.
Recovery Assistant
Anything can happen, but so long as you have a recent backup you should be able fix the problems and get back up and running again. Here’s how.
Step by step through all the features, some undocumented by Apple. Two different Recovery Assistants, Repair Assistant, Erase Mac, Startup Security Utility, change settings and more.
You’ve tried entering your password, but it doesn’t work. Should you try guessing? As that imposes increasing waiting times of up to 8 hours, maybe not. Try this instead.
If you’re lucky, it should restart into Recovery Assistant. Otherwise advice on how to manage a boot loop or freeze, and how to disable 3rd party kernel extensions.
We’re running out of panaceas. Resetting NVRAM and SMC, repairing permissions, installing the Combo updater. or re-installing macOS, are vanishing fast. Is Recovery Assistant the new panacea?
An enhancement to Recovery intended to fix Macs that don’t start up correctly. Also available in Recovery mode.
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