Get an old Mac ready to sell

Recently got a new Mac? It's time to prepare your old one for a sale

- David Crookes

If you recently got yourself one of the amazing new Macs then you may be wondering what to do with your old one. The natural thing, if you can’t think of a use, is to sell it, but does that run the risk of potentially sharing your personal data? Not at all.

Whether you have a relatively new Mac or one that Apple would deem ‘vintage’, there are ways of wiping a machine of sensitive information so that it can arrive with a new owner box-fresh.

The process for this has changed over the years. It's now much easier to erase a Mac and reset it to factory settings, but we're going to try and cover all bases here because some of our readers are sure to have very old Macs and they'll still fetch a decent price.

The first step is to work out what Mac you have. Newer Macs boast either Apple silicon chip or a T2 Security Chip (check the latter at support.apple.com/en-gb/103265). We've also included instructions for older Intel Macs.

HOW TO Prepare your Mac

1 Back up your data

It's always a good idea to back up your old Mac's data first. Connect an external storage device exceeding the old Mac's capacity, click Apple menu > System Settings or Preferences, choose Time Machine and add the drive.

2 Sign out of iCloud