Activate Mac -- no WiFi menu to select network

Turn off mac and run in safe mode, wifi icon should appear. Worked like a charm, wifi logo appeared.

How to use safe mode on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

Actually, if you have a second Mac, you can share the internet with the other one you would like to restore, to do that.

1. Turn on your MacBook as usual, until you see the screen that requests you to connect to a Wi-Fi
2. Connect your MacBook with another Mac by USB-C cable.
3. In the second Mac, go to System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing.
4. At the "Share your connection from" box, select "Wi-Fi"
5. On the "To computers using" list, check "Thunderbolt Bridge" and check your MacBook if it appears on the list.
6. Finally, check the check box at the left of the "Internet Sharing" option in the "Service" list at the left of the screen, it will display another window and you just need to activate it.

If the sharing internet is enabled correctly, it will take some seconds for your MacBook to detect the internet connection and start the recovery.

I did these steps using a Mac mini M1 as recovery and a MacBook Pro (Intel) as a secondary Mac and worked pretty well.

If you don't have Ethernet cable, which Apple really don't like you using because if they did.... (I'll stop ranting here), you can follow these steps which should work for you:

• While in 'Recovery Assistant', click on the 'Recovery Assistant' menu
• Select 'Erase Mac...' button
• Click on the blue 'erase mac...' link in the middle of the screen
• Acknowledge that you're erasing it
• Once complete, the system will reboot and..... drum roll please!
• Provide you with the Wi-Fi icon in the upper right hand corner
• Connect to the SSID of your choice
• Allow the system to activate itself
• Hit 'Exit to Recovery'
• Carry on with your life

Hope this helps someone that doesn't have the time, patience, or money to play the Apple's game of choice: "Get this $40 adapter if you want the things that worked to continue to work"

Of all the myriad options this worked:

• key aspect: extended power hold.
• Verified solution: power click to options, power click then keyboard to options did not work.
• to know it worked: as above you get to central options icon with trackpad enabled, spinning process icon, Wi-Fi upper right.
• To know it failed: you don't get central options icon.

many thanks.

MacBook Pro: 2022 64gb M1

I've been dealing with the exact same issue for almost two weeks now, it's mind-blowing how silly of an issue this is but it was unfortunately my very last straw with apple. After reading a dozen or so articles and talking to three different customer service reps, the first two were nice but unable to help solve the issue. The third one, a very snarky teenage sounding male, had me delete my full hard drive, which still didn't fix the problem.

I couldn't take it anymore and chose to hang up and do something I've been thinking about more and more recently... switching to Windows! Talked to some friends and gathered the parts and I am happy to say I am writing this, my farewell to Apple, safe and sound from a Windows PC and I couldn't be happier about it.

From apples OEM everything to their overly structured repair process (that still somehow always results in an hour long process, not to mention the $600 repair fee for a cracked MacBook screen) an android is looking better than ever.

If the Mac is showing an Activate Mac or Activation Lock screen in macOS Recovery, you can’t boot macOS at all. This is because device activation is required before the T2 Security Chip (Intel-based Macs) or LLB (Apple silicon) allows macOS to boot.

macOS Recovery doesn’t offer Safe Mode, due to how minimal it already is.

i have tried all of the suggested fixes in this thread. Held down power key until startup options appear - never appears, even after 10 min. Held down power key then restarted with power key held down - didn’t work. Tried to boot in safe mode - didn’t work. Over and over again with every attempt I still get the screen that says “Activate Mac” with text instructing to select network - but no network available. This is unbelievably irritating for a brand new 2022 MacBook Pro. I cannot use it

First you buy Macbook Pro for around 2650 dl, but the dealer say nothing about all the new cabels and adapter that are needed. That **** me of. Once a time I went from Macrosoft to Apple for it was always completely awful to deal with. Mac was always working. Now it seams that the same sickening has developt inside Apple.

Yes i had to buy a special cabel/adaptor for ethernet. 30 dollars more, and now i seams to connect with Apple server for downloading new OS. Nothing else worked

I had the same exact thing happen when I tried to erase my Mac Mini M1. I ended up connecting my Macbook Air to my Mac Mini and running Apple Configuration and it loaded the system onto my Mac Mini M1 and reinstalled the operating system then rebooted and then it showed then it showed the Wi-Fi symbol at the top right of screen greyed out. I was then able to click on it and connect to Wi-Fi and everything worked fine from there.

Reinstalled system and everything is working fine now.

2020 MacBook Pro: I just experienced this myself today (06/07/2022). I tried the “Erase Mac” and it didn’t still show a Wi-Fi option. Reset a few times and nothing still came up. But after resetting a couple of times then trying the “Erase Mac” again, I was finally able to log back into my Wi-Fi.

Lesson: log out of everything on your Mac before erasing and resetting. Most importantly iCloud before sending it off. I read one forum that suggested to log out/remove the device on Find My which is an excellent security feature. But that was one of my other steps too in case anyone tries both erasing/restarting and it still doesn’t work. Interesting enough was my phone didn’t detect it but my newer Mac did. So luckily I was able to remove it from my Mac and proceed.

I ran into this as well. It looks like it was because the Mac was encrypted. After a bit of testing, it turned out if I decrypted before doing Erase All Content and Settings, when it restarted into Recovery Assistant and tried to activate, the WiFi menu was available, but it wasn't if I left it encrypted.

Hope this helps!

So what I did is press the power button and held it until it shut down then waited for 30 seconds then pressed it again and held for another 30 seconds then you will see a gear icon click it and click continue after that your Macintosh will reboot and you will see a Wi-Fi icon appear on top right of your screen.

Hope this helps and remember your Macintosh isn't broken and everything will be okay. :)

I had the same issue on my Macbook Air M1. What eventually worked for me was pressing down on the power button until it turned off. Then hold down the power button until it turned on. Then a screen comes up with SETTINGS on it. Clicking on settings took me to the same Recovery page, but the wifi option had appeared on the top right.

I’m having same problem here did all things said above problem is my macbook says specified host not found during activation process I’m using a dongle with ethernet cable do you know what should i do?

THIS IS A UX FLAW

There is no "list". You have to navigate to the top right corner of your screen to your wifi network icon. The kicker is that the dark background Apple uses on this screen is so dark, you can barely see it! I spent an hour restarting, searching for my ethernet adapter and cables, troubleshooting, until I just happened look very closely around the screen.