How to reinstall macOS if Recovery won’t work

The first thing to try is to restart your Mac and try to enter recovery mode again. It may work the second time.

Completely turn off your Mac and then make sure you press the right buttons when you start it up again:

• M-series Mac: Press and hold the power button.
• Intel Mac: Press and hold Command + R.

You should also check your keyboard is working (especially if it’s a Bluetooth keyboard). Try using a wired keyboard if possible. It is possible that you can’t enter Recovery because your keyboard isn’t working.

If you have a wireless Apple keyboard, for example, try plugging it directly into your Mac using the charging cable.

If Recovery mode isn’t working on your M-series Mac then try fallback recovery mode. This is a little known feature for M-series Macs (detailed by Apple here) that replaces the Internet Recovery option found on Intel Macs.

You can enter Fallback Recovery Mode on an M1 or M2 Mac by double pressing the power button as detailed in the steps below:

1. Press the power button.
2. Then release the power button.
3. Press and hold down the power button and wait for the “Loading Startup Options” message to appear before letting go of the Power button.

Fallback recovery mode gives you access to a second copy of the recoveryOS on the SSD of Macs with M1 or M2 chip. Apple says the second copy is there for resiliency.

There are a few other ways you might be able to force your Mac to start up in recovery mode if Command + R isn’t working for you. Apple has a couple of other commands for Intel Macs that you could try:

You could use Internet Recovery Mode – an option that we will discuss in more detail below. This method will download a version of macOS from the internet, which might be a solution if you can’t access the Recovery partition on your Mac. We discuss Internet Recovery Mode in more detail below.

• Press Option/Alt + Command + R when you boot up to enter Internet Recovery Mode.

Once you enter this mode you will be able to access an Apple server to download the version of macOS. This will be the latest macOS compatible with your Mac. Note: If you aren’t running Sierra 10.12.4 or later, this will install the version that came with your Mac.

If you don’t want to install the latest version of macOS try this:

• Shift + Option/Alt + Command R (if you are running Sierra 10.12.4 of later) will install the version of macOS that came with your Mac, or the one closest to it that is still available.

If your Intel Mac has a T2 chip you can use this key combination:

• Option/Alt + Command + R will install the latest macOS on your Mac if you have a T2 chip.

Perhaps having tried the above and had no luck. Or maybe you got into Recovery Mode only for everything to freeze up.

It is possible your Mac’s disc is beyond repair and Recovery Mode inaccessible. In that case our article about How to recover data from a damaged Mac might be helpful.

It’s also possible that at some point you have accidentally deleted the Recovery partition.

Our next step is to check to see if your Mac has hasn’t got a working Recovery partition.

One indication that you don’t have a Recovery partition is if, despite pressing the key combinations listed above, the Mac boots up to your normal view, or you’re faced with a completely blank screen. In either case it’s likely you haven’t got a Recovery partition.

You can check Terminal to see if you have a recovery partition, here’s how to do that:

1. Open Terminal.
2. Type diskutil list.
3. Press enter.

You should see a list of all the volumes and partitions on your computer (like the image above). The first drive (/dev/disk0) should have a partition.

You could try resetting your NVRAM to see if it makes your Recovery partition miraculously appear:

Reset your PRAM or NVRAM (Intel Mac)

1. Shut down your Mac and hold down Command-Option-P-R during boot.
2. Wait for the chimes and let go.

Reset your NVRAM (M-series Mac)

Resetting NVRAM isn’t really an option on M-series Macs. NVRAM does exist in M1 Macs, but it’s not the same. You could try the following, but it didn’t work for us.

1. Open Terminal.
2. Type NVRAM -c

Read more here: How to reset NVRAM on an M1 or Intel Mac.

If you have concluded that your Recovery Partition is missing, or doesn’t work and you’ve tried everything, there are still some more options. Next we will look at reinstalling macOS without Recovery.

Before we do that though, if it’s an option you should take time to back up up your Mac using Time Machine if you haven’t done so. This will enable you to restore all your files, folders and apps once you’ve reinstalled macOS.

It is possible to restore a Mac without a recovery partition, but it can be tricky (especially on older Macs). You have a few approaches available:

We’ll run through each option.

Here’s what to do if you haven’t got a recovery partition on your Mac and need to reinstall macOS (in fact, even if you don’t need to reinstall macOS you probably should, because a missing Recovery Partition is not a good sign).

The first approach is to use a feature called Internet Recovery. Newer Macs are able to boot directly from an internet connection, even with no Recovery partition available. Internet Recovery was added to macOS in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011, but older Macs may be able to get Internet Recovery Mode as a firmware update.

Here is how to use macOS Internet Recovery:

On an Intel Mac

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Hold down Command-Option-R and press the Power button. (On some Mac keyboards the Option key will be named Alt).
3. Hold down those keys until you a spinning globe and the message “Starting Internet Recovery. This may take a while”.
4. The message will be replaced with a progress bar. Wait for it to fill. Expect it to take a while…
5. Wait for the MacOS Utilities screen to appear.
6. Click Reinstall macOS and follow the installation process.

On an M-series Mac

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Press and hold the Power button and wait for the Mac to start up. Don’t let go of the button until you see “Loading Startup Options”.
3. Click on Options.
4. The internet recovery screen should load.

If you have accessed Internet Recovery mode it might be a very slow process depending on your connection speed. When we experienced this problem we connected our Mac to the hub via an Ethernet cable (you may need an adapter, such as this Thunderbolt to Ethernet Adapter from Apple, $29/£29).

If you can’t access Internet Recovery, then you are left with the option to create a bootable installer from a flash drive (at least 12GB in size). Note that this completely erases the USB flash drive, so be careful to remove any files from it first. We cover how to create a bootable installer for macOS here, but we’ll give an overview of the method below.

The simplest way to create a USB flash installer it to
use Terminal:

Open your Applications folder and look to see if you have the Install files for the version of macOS or Mac OS X you require. In the case of Sierra or High Sierra you’ll see: something like the example above.

If you don’t have the files read about how to get older versions of macOS or Mac OS X here.

When you have got hold of the installer for the version of macOS that you require, follow these steps:

1. Attach your USB flash drive to your Mac.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Select the volume (under External) in the sidebar. The Volume is the top part, not the partition (which is underneath).
4. Click Erase.
5. Make sure it says “Untitled” in the Name field. Don’t change this. Click Erase.
6. Open Terminal.
7. Cut and paste the correct createinstallmedia text into Terminal (the code will depend on the version of macOS, so we suggest getting it from this article: createinstallmedia commands for versions of macOS. It will look something like the below image.)
8. You’ll then need to enter your admin password. And then enter “y” and press Return. It will first wipe your flash drive, then turn it into a bootable installer.
9. Expect to wait a while for the process to finish.

Now you can follow these steps to use the bootable installer:

1. Make sure the bootable installer (USB flash drive) is connected to your Mac.
2. Shut down your Mac.
3. Hold down Option/Alt and press the Power button.
4. The startup device list window should appear displaying a yellow drive with Install (software name) below it.
5. Select it and press Return. Wait for the progress bar to fill.
6. Select Disk Utility.
7. Select the drive under Internal (your main hard drive).
8. Click Erase.
9. Give the drive a name; “Macintosh HD” is traditional but you can choose. Ensure that the Format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme is GUID Partition Map.
10. Click Erase.
11. Click Done.
12. Choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility.
13. Select Install macOS and click Continue.
14. Follow the install macOS options.
15. Select Macintosh HD as the installation disk, when presented, and click Install.

macOS will now be installed on your hard drive from the bootable installer. The whole process can take around half an hour. After this has finished you will have a new installation of macOS along with a Recovery partition.

You may get the message: “This copy of the Install [macOS name] application can’t be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.” If so you need to adjust the date and time in macOS.