This method of booting is unique to Apple Silicon Macs, and whether you want to boot into recovery mode on an M1 Mac or choose a different boot disk it is the same beginning procedure of holding the power button.

Select the external drive you want to star the Mac from and choose Continue.

Power on the Mac and then keep holding down the power button until you see the startup options screen.

Booting an ARM M1 Mac from External Boot Mediaįor an Apple Silicon Mac, do the following to boot from an external drive: Using the OPTION key to load the boot menu and choose an external disk should work fine after this. The T2 chip is typically included with an Intel Mac that has a Touch Bar or Touch ID. Only Macs with a T2 chip need to do this.

Reboot the Mac again, holding OPTION to boot from a boot disk should work now.

Under the External Boot section, check the box for “Allow booting from external media” to prevent boot restrictions.

Pull down the Utilities menu, then choose “Startup Security Utility”.

Reboot the Mac, then immediately hold Command + R keys to load into Recovery Mode.

If you’re finding the ability to boot a Mac from an external boot disk or other external media is disabled or not working as intended, read along to disable the security feature on T2 Macs or learn how to boot an M1 Mac from an external drive.Īllowing an Intel Mac to Use External Boot Media

If this setting is enabled on a Mac, the computer will not boot when a USB boot disk or other boot media is used.Īdditionally, booting an M1 Mac from external boot disks is different from Intel Macs.

Some of the later model Intel Macs have a security chip that offers the prevention of external boot media to be used to startup a Mac.

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