Click the Apple () symbol in the top left corner of your Mac's screen and select Restart.Now that you've taken the above precautionary steps and unlinked your purchases and accounts, it's time to erase your Mac's drive and reset the system to its factory defaults. Uncheck all the boxes in the list to remove copies of the related data on this Mac.Click the Apple () symbol in the top left corner of your Mac's screen and select System Preferences.That way you'll know for sure there isn't anything lingering on your Mac that links your Apple ID to this machine. It's also important to disable Find My Mac and sign out of ‌iCloud‌ in macOS. To learn how to de-authorize your iTunes account, check out our dedicated guide. Similarly, you should de-authorize your iTunes account on the Mac, as this removes its access to content that you bought from the iTunes Store, iBooks Store, or App Store, including things like music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. Some third-party apps require licenses that only work on a limited number of computers, so think about any licenses you may have purchased. There are certain apps that will need to be manually unlinked from your Mac before you say goodbye to it. That way, the same backup volume can be used by Apple's Migration Assistant during a macOS installation to quickly transfer your applications, files and settings from the old Mac to a new one.Ĭheck out our dedicated guide on how to back up your Mac using Time Machine. However, we highly recommend that you take the time to perform a Time Machine backup of your system using an external drive.

If you use iCloud, your photos, mail, contacts, documents, and so on should be automatically backed up in cloud storage. You could do this manually by copying across files onto an external drive. If you've upgraded to macOS Monterey on a Mac with Apple silicon or a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip, follow the steps to erase all content and settings instead of following the steps in this article.īefore you do anything, you should back up the files on your Mac.

If you plan to give away, sell, or trade in your Mac, the first thing you should do is erase the data on it and perform a factory reset.

How to clean out files on mac