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I'm following the instructions on Apple's website. In Utility disk I see Macintosh HD in the sidebar and I see the erase button in the toolbar, but I'm unable to click on the erase button. Why is this happening, and what do I need to do to resolve it? I've tried shutting down my computer a couple of times and restarting it and then trying again, and that hasn't helped. I'm trying to prepare my computer to mail back to Apple as a trade in. Thanks.
You cannot erase the drive you are booted from. You need to boot from external media such as Recovery Mode, Internet Recovery Mode, or a bootable macOS USB installer. While you can follow the instructions for "erasing" the volume found in the recovery mode instructions I linked, it is much better to erase the whole physical drive instead if you have an Intel Mac. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. The physical drive will be identified something like "Apple SSD....". Erase the whole physical drive a GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled), although if you are installing Big Sur or Monterey, then you may need to erase the drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option). After erasing the drive quit Disk Utility and select the "Reinstall macOS" option.
Make sure to have a good backup of your data before erasing the drive.
You should always have frequent & regular backups. It is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD after the Trash has been emptied plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs (even a brand new SSD). With many of the USB-C Macs it is very difficult to impossible to recover any data from an SSD if the Logic Board is not functioning. With 2018+ models containing a T2 Security chip the ability to recover data is even less likely because the data is hardware encrypted by the T2 security chip. The firmware on these Macs also have been known to become corrupted when updating the system firmware during OS upgrades and some macOS updates.
You cannot erase the drive you are booted from. You need to boot from external media such as Recovery Mode, Internet Recovery Mode, or a bootable macOS USB installer. While you can follow the instructions for "erasing" the volume found in the recovery mode instructions I linked, it is much better to erase the whole physical drive instead if you have an Intel Mac. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. The physical drive will be identified something like "Apple SSD....". Erase the whole physical drive a GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled), although if you are installing Big Sur or Monterey, then you may need to erase the drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option). After erasing the drive quit Disk Utility and select the "Reinstall macOS" option.
Make sure to have a good backup of your data before erasing the drive.
You should always have frequent & regular backups. It is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD after the Trash has been emptied plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs (even a brand new SSD). With many of the USB-C Macs it is very difficult to impossible to recover any data from an SSD if the Logic Board is not functioning. With 2018+ models containing a T2 Security chip the ability to recover data is even less likely because the data is hardware encrypted by the T2 security chip. The firmware on these Macs also have been known to become corrupted when updating the system firmware during OS upgrades and some macOS updates.
Erasing MacBook Pro 2016 model
