These steps apply only to Mac computers with an Intel processor. The steps to erase a Mac with Apple silicon are different.
From the utilities window in macOS Recovery, select Disk Utility and click Continue. Continue to use APFS or Mac OS Extended. Published Date: December 15, 2020.
Before erasing your Mac
Mojave release date. Mojave was released for download on Monday 24 September. The good news is that Fusion Drives - and hard drives - will get APFS in the next version of macOS. Apple has also made significant under-the-hood improvements with the move from HFS to Apple File System (APFS), as well as introduced Metal 2, which gets additional clout out of the Mac's GPU – all-in-all, a solid macOS update that will release to the general public by the end of September.
- Make a backup of any files that you want to keep. Erasing your Mac permanently deletes its files.
- If you want to restore your Mac to factory settings, such as to prepare it for a new owner, first learn what to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac. Then erase your Mac as the final step.
Use Disk Utility to erase your Mac
- Start up from macOS Recovery: Turn on your Mac, then immediately press and hold these two keys until you see an Apple logo or other image: Command (⌘) and R.
- If asked, select a user you know the password for, then enter their administrator password.
- From the utilities window, select Disk Utility and click Continue.
- Select Macintosh HD in the sidebar of Disk Utility. Don't see Macintosh HD?
- Click the Erase button in the toolbar, then enter the requested details:
- Name: Macintosh HD
- Format: APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), as recommended by Disk Utility
- Click Erase Volume Group. If you don't see this button, click Erase instead.
- If asked, enter your Apple ID. Forgot your Apple ID?
- After the erase is done, select any other internal volumes in the sidebar, then click the delete volume (–) button in the toolbar to delete that volume.
Disregard any internal volume named Macintosh HD or Macintosh HD - Data, as well as any volumes in the External and Disk Images sections of the sidebar. - Quit Disk Utility to return to the utilities window.
- If you want to start up again from the disk you erased, select Reinstall macOS in the utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions to reinstall macOS.
If you don't see Macintosh HD in Disk Utility
Your built-in startup disk should be the first item listed in the Disk Utility sidebar. It's named Macintosh HD, unless you changed its name. If you don't see it there, choose Apple menu > Shut Down, then unplug all nonessential devices from your Mac and try again.
If your disk still doesn't appear in Disk Utility, or Disk Utility reports that the erase process failed, your Mac might need service. If you need help, please contact Apple Support.
Learn more
For more information about using Disk Utility, see the Disk Utility User Guide.
About Apple security updates
For our customers' protection, Apple doesn't disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until an investigation has occurred and patches or releases are available. Recent releases are listed on the Apple security updates page.
For more information about security, see the Apple Product Security page. You can encrypt communications with Apple using the Apple Product Security PGP Key.
Apple security documents reference vulnerabilities by CVE-ID when possible.
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, Security Update 2018-004 Sierra, Security Update 2018-004 El Capitan
Released July 9, 2018
Accounts
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: A malicious application may be able to access local users AppleIDs
Description: A privacy issue in the handling of Open Directory records was addressed with improved indexing.
CVE-2018-4470: Jacob Greenfield of Commonwealth School
Entry added December 10, 2018
AMD
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: A malicious application may be able to determine kernel memory layout
Description: An information disclosure issue was addressed by removing the vulnerable code.
CVE-2018-4289: shrek_wzw of Qihoo 360 Nirvan Team
APFS
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges
Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.
CVE-2018-4268: Mac working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative
ATS
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: A malicious application may be able to gain root privileges
Description: A type confusion issue was addressed with improved memory handling.
CVE-2018-4285: Mohamed Ghannam (@_simo36)
Bluetooth
Available for: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) and MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
Other Mac models were addressed with macOS High Sierra 10.13.5.
Impact: An attacker in a privileged network position may be able to intercept Bluetooth traffic
Description: An input validation issue existed in Bluetooth. This issue was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-5383: Lior Neumann and Eli Biham
Entry added July 23, 2018
CFNetwork
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: Cookies may unexpectedly persist in Safari
Description: A cookie management issue was addressed with improved checks.
CVE-2018-4293: an anonymous researcher
CoreCrypto
Available for: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6, macOS Sierra 10.12.6
Impact: A malicious application may be able to break out of its sandbox
Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-4269: Abraham Masri (@cheesecakeufo)
CUPS
Available for: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6, macOS Sierra 10.12.6, macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: An attacker in a privileged position may be able to perform a denial of service attack
Description: A null pointer dereference was addressed with improved validation.
CVE-2018-4276: Jakub Jirasek of Secunia Research at Flexera
Entry added September 25, 2018
DesktopServices
Available for: macOS Sierra 10.12.6
Macos Apfs Release Date 2020
Impact: A local user may be able to view sensitive user information
Description: A permissions issue existed in which execute permission was incorrectly granted. This issue was addressed with improved permission validation.
CVE-2018-4178: Arjen Hendrikse
Intel Graphics Driver
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges
Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-4456: Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos
Entry updated January 22, 2019
IOGraphics
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: A local user may be able to read kernel memory
Description: An out-of-bounds read issue existed that led to the disclosure of kernel memory. This was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-4283: @panicaII working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative
Kernel
Fnaf ar website. Available for: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6, macOS Sierra 10.12.6, macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: Systems using Intel® Core-based microprocessors may potentially allow a local process to infer data utilizing Lazy FP state restore from another process through a speculative execution side channel
Description: Lazy FP state restore instead of eager save and restore of the state upon a context switch. Lazy restored states are potentially vulnerable to exploits where one process may infer register values of other processes through a speculative execution side channel that infers their value.
An information disclosure issue was addressed with FP/SIMD register state sanitization.
CVE-2018-3665: Julian Stecklina of Amazon Germany, Thomas Prescher of Cyberus Technology GmbH (cyberus-technology.de), Zdenek Sojka of SYSGO AG (sysgo.com), and Colin Percival
Kernel
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: Mounting a maliciously crafted NFS network share may lead to arbitrary code execution with system privileges
Description: Multiple memory corruption issues were addressed with improved memory handling.
CVE-2018-4259: Kevin Backhouse of Semmle and LGTM.com
CVE-2018-4286: Kevin Backhouse of Semmle and LGTM.com
CVE-2018-4287: Kevin Backhouse of Semmle and LGTM.com
CVE-2018-4288: Kevin Backhouse of Semmle and LGTM.com
CVE-2018-4291: Kevin Backhouse of Semmle and LGTM.com
Entry added October 30, 2018
libxpc Who made terraria.
Available for: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6, macOS Sierra 10.12.6, macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: An application may be able to gain elevated privileges
Description: A memory corruption issue was addressed with improved memory handling.
CVE-2018-4280: Brandon Azad
libxpc
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Macos Apfs Case Sensitive
Impact: A malicious application may be able to read restricted memory
Description: An out-of-bounds read was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-4248: Brandon Azad
LinkPresentation
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: Visiting a malicious website may lead to address bar spoofing
Description: A spoofing issue existed in the handling of URLs. This issue was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-4277: xisigr of Tencent's Xuanwu Lab (tencent.com)
Perl
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: Multiple buffer overflow issues existed in Perl
Description: Multiple issues in Perl were addressed with improved memory handling.
CVE-2018-6797: Brian Carpenter
CVE-2018-6913: GwanYeong Kim
Entry added October 30, 2018
Ruby
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: Multiple issues in Ruby were addressed in this update.
CVE-2017-0898
CVE-2017-10784
CVE-2017-14033
CVE-2017-14064
CVE-2017-17405
CVE-2017-17742
CVE-2018-6914
CVE-2018-8777
CVE-2018-8778
CVE-2018-8779
CVE-2018-8780
Entry added October 30, 2018
WebKit
Available for: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5
Impact: Visiting a malicious website may lead to address bar spoofing
Description: A spoofing issue existed in the handling of URLs. This issue was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2018-4274: Tomasz Bojarski
Entry added July 28, 2020
Additional recognition
App Store
We would like to acknowledge Jesse Endahl & Stevie Hryciw of Fleetsmith, and Max Bélanger of Dropbox for their assistance.
Entry added August 8, 2018
Help Viewer
We would like to acknowledge Wojciech Reguła (@_r3ggi) of SecuRing for their assistance with four mitigations.
Kernel
We would like to acknowledge juwei lin (@panicaII) of Trend Micro working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative for their assistance.
Security
We would like to acknowledge Brad Dahlsten of Iowa State University for their assistance.