A factory restore returns your MacBook or iMac to its original state (when you first purchased the device). There might be a few reasons why you want or need to do this, such as the machine isn't running as well as it once did or you're planning on selling the laptop or desktop. No matter the reason, there might come a time when a factory reset is your best option.
But how do you pull off such a feat? Is it something only the computer savvy should attempt? Believe it or not, Apple has actually made this process fairly painless -- especially if you're running macOS Monterey on M1-based hardware. I will show you how to do a factory reset on macOS Monterey, with both Intel and M1 (Apple Silicon) based hardware.
This process will delete all of your data.
So if you have important files on your laptop or desktop, make sure to first back them up to an external drive or cloud account before moving forward with this process. With that said, let's restore.
Restoring on M1-based hardware
Apple has made it incredibly easy to do a factory restore with macOS Monterey running on M1-based devices. To do this, make sure your device is plugged in (you don't want to trust this to your battery), click the Apple button in the top left corner of your screen, and then click System Preferences. Once System Preferences is open, click the System Preferences menu in the top bar and then click Erase All Content and Settings (Figure 1).
Figure 1
You will be prompted to type your user password and then click OK. The resulting popup (Figure 2) informs you of everything that will