

The most important part is that you no longer have to press a key combination during startup. Needless to say, obscure key combinations aren’t the friendliest way to help someone who may already be stressed out about their Mac not working, so Apple improved things for the new M1-based Macs.

Most notably, pressing Option displays the Startup Manager and lets you pick a boot drive, Command-R starts up from macOS Recovery, Command-Option-P-R resets the NVRAM, Shift starts up in Safe mode, D opens Apple Diagnostics to check the hardware, and T starts up in Target Disk Mode.

Got a new M1 Mac? Here’s What You Need to Know About the New Startup Modes.įor many years, Macs have relied on sets of keys held at startup to enable specific modes.
