When I try to run diagnostics on my Mac air 2019 it says “Starting Internet Recovery” instead of Diagnostics

Jarmaracark wrote:

Just to clarify, I get the Recovery message whether I choose recovery or diagnostics?

Yes. Even if it boots into Internet Recovery Mode nothing bad will happen without your manual intervention as you are presented with a menu of options including "Shutdown" and "Restart".

If it was any other company I could understand it, but Apple used to pride itself on simple easy to use systems and interfaces. This goes to show how much Apple is failing these days. I saw the writing on the wall with the Retina laptops and macOS 10.13 how things were declining from Apple's glory days. Having an oversight like this 15 years ago would have been unthinkable for Apple.

The Apple Diagnostics leverages the same Internet Recovery framework. Apple was just too lazy to properly label the mode you are using. Just let the diagnostics to finish booting. You can run the Apple Diagnostics by holding down the Option + D keys or on some systems just the "D" key will also work.

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac

I know you said that you did it right, but it sounds as if you may be using the wrong command on startup. To access the Diagnostics mode, press the D key on restart. Internet Recovery mode requires that the Command + Option + R keys be pressed at startup. You can also do some diagnostics/repair by running the Disk Utility app. I would rerun it until it finishes with a Disk OK message.