Recovery mode on M1 Macs

Recovery mode on M1 Macs has changed, although most won’t notice too much. Press and hold the Power button and Big Sur starts your M1 Mac up from the dedicated Recovery container on its internal SSD, regardless of whether it has just been running from an external disk. That remains true when it has been running Big Sur, but if it has just been using Monterey, the Recovery system will be that in a Recovery volume on the last boot disk, not the internal SSD.

Say your Mac has macOS 12.2 installed on an external disk, and 12.1 on its internal SSD. When it was last started up from that external disk, shut down, then started up into Recovery, it will load the Recovery system for 12.2, the last system it booted from. When it had last been started up from its internal SSD, it will load the Recovery system for 12.1 from the internal SSD instead, essentially the same behaviour as an Intel Mac.