Wipe a Mac for its new owner

How should I prepare my old Mac before passing it on for my daughter to “inherit”?

If your Mac has a T2 or M1 chip and is running macOS Monterey, this is simple. Back up or copy all the files you need from it, deauthorize the Mac in Music or one of the other Apple media apps, then run the new Erase All Content & Settings command, available in the System Prefs menu. When that eventually prompts you to select the country to personalize the Mac for, force it to shut down and it’ll be ready for its new user.

Older versions of macOS and Intel Macs without T2 chips require a longer manual process to accomplish the same. That starts with disabling both Find My Mac and Activation Lock, followed by backing up and deauthorizing. You then have to manually sign out of iCloud and iMessage and disable any firmware password in Recovery mode. Reset NVRAM next and unpair any Bluetooth devices which won’t be going to that Mac’s new owner.

The big problem remains how to erase the Mac’s internal storage; for a hard disk or Fusion Drive, you can do that by reformatting it in Recovery mode’s Disk Utility. While that also works for an SSD, it isn’t possible to overwrite free disk space in the way that you can perform a secure erase on a hard drive. Finally, you should install a clean copy of macOS in Recovery mode. Apple has more details at apple.co/3herv74 and apple.co/2MeqKfb.