No disk for Recovery after erasing Monterey

Perfect - thanks for running that! Exactly what I suspected.

To re-add the APFS container needed for your macOS installation:

1. Start up in macOS Recovery.
2. If you're prompted to enter an administrator password, do so to continue.
3. At the top of the screen, select Utilities -> Terminal.
4. Run "diskutil list" again and verify that the internal disk is disk0, as shown in your previous output. If the current output differs, you might have to modify the next command as appropriate.
5. Assuming that the internal disk is disk0, run this command to add a new APFS container between the Apple_APFS_iSC (disk0s1) container and the Apple_APFS_Recovery (disk0s2) container: diskutil addpartition disk0s1 APFS "Macintosh HD" 0
6. If successful, a new APFS container should now be created as disk0s3, with a capacity of 494.4 GB. It should also have an empty volume inside named "Macintosh HD". You can verify this by running "diskutil list" again.
7. Quit Terminal and reinstall macOS.

EDIT: Fixed some disk ID numbers.

Hi emcgowen,

To guaranteed resolve this issue, you could restore the firmware on your M1 Mac, if you have another Mac available: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/apple-configurator-2/apdd5f3c75ad/mac.

If you wanted to, you could even use a firmware restore to downgrade everything - firmware, Secure Enclave, macOS, you name it - back to macOS Big Sur. Let me know if you want to go this route and I can provide the steps needed.

Otherwise, check the main APFS container (not the one for the BaseSystem) in Disk Utility. If it doesn't contain any volumes inside, add a new volume called "Macintosh HD". The name doesn't matter, but that's the default system name. Once you add a volume into the container, you should be able to reinstall macOS with no issues.

EDIT: There might be another way to downgrade to macOS Big Sur just using your Mac. You'll need to reinstall macOS Monterey first though. Let me know if you're interested in this and I can help.

Thanks for that info.

An M1 Mac uses three APFS containers as part of its normal operation. Two of them (as far as I'm aware) can only be recreated in a firmware restore:

• Apple_APFS_iSC (firmware): This container contains 4 volumes that hold hardware related data, along with the secure boot policies and the Secure Enclave OS.

• Apple_APFS: This is a regular APFS container, and contains a regular macOS installation.

• Apple_APFS_Recovery (firmware): This container contains System Recovery.

• BaseSystem container: This container contains the recoveryOS. It resides inside a disk image, and the disk image resides inside the System Recovery container.

Given that you were able to successfully start up in macOS Recovery, even though your normal APFS container is missing, that indicates that the two firmware containers are working properly, and you don't need to restore your Mac.

Follow these steps to describe your disk layout. From there, I can post steps to re-add the missing APFS container and reinstall macOS:

1. Start up from macOS Recovery.
2. If prompted for an administrator password, enter it to continue.
3. At the top of the screen, select Utilities -> Terminal.
4. Type this command and hit Enter (Return): diskutil list
5. Select all of the output and press Command-C to copy it.
6. Quit Terminal and open Safari.
7. Sign into Apple Support Communities and paste the output here.