There is a bit of a catch: if you do this straight away, there is a good chance that the Mac will get stuck here and throw up an error – error -3001F in my personal experience. The way forward is to use the built-in “internet recovery” which, on startup, can be triggered via pressing “cmd + R”. It may seem like you just bricked your MacBook, but luckily there is a remedy. Type ' resetpassword' as one word, without the quotes, and press Return.If you’re anything like me, you will (or already have) accidentally wiped your Macbook’s ssd. A new window will show up, waiting for you to enter a command. With your Mac now in Recovery Mode, click on Utilities in the menu bar followed by Terminal. (We have a more thorough walkthrough of Recovery Mode on the M1 Macs.)

You can also get into Recovery Mode by restarting your Mac and trying to time the keyboard combo of Command+R, but in my experience, starting with your Mac turned off is the most reliable method.įor the recently released Macbook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini that use Apple's M1 processor, you'll need to turn off the computer and then press and hold the power button until you're presented with an options button. Hold Command+R until you see a progress bar show up below the Apple logo. For Macs with an Intel processor, press and hold the Command and R keys on your keyboard, then press the power button. Here's how to get started regaining control over your Mac computer.įrom there, the process to getting into Recovery Mode will depend on the kind of Mac you have.

If you didn't link your Apple ID, that's OK, there's still another option to reset your account password. There are a few different methods you can use, and the road you take to unlock your Mac without a password could depend on whether you linked your Apple ID to your user account on your Mac during setup, or if you have one of the new M1 Macs. Because of that, MacOS includes a tool for this exact scenario. Apple knows that a forgotten password can be a personal hell, especially if you're working on a deadline. But what happens when you forget the password to log into your Mac? After trying, then retrying the password you thought was correct, it's only natural to want to panic.

For online accounts, you can just click a few links, enter your email address and then reset your password. I think it's safe to say we've all forgotten a password at some point.

Wipe my macbook pro