Most of the instructions I am finding are for completely wiping the hard drive, but I want to gift my 2019 MacBook Pro to a friend. I max'd out at HighSierra OS10.13.6, so recently upgraded. Can someone point me to directions for erasing the personal data, passwords and other access bits, but leaving the programs and essential system files intact? Thank you!
What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support
This is the only legit method. It's not kosher to give someone third-party apps that you've installed.
What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support
This is the only legit method. It's not kosher to give someone third-party apps that you've installed.
To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...
Open System Preferences>Users & Groups, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.
Then in the same Sys Pref delete the other users & do not save the data.
In addition to the legal issues which @dialabrain has mentioned, any apps installed from the App Store will be tied to your AppleID. This means when your friend goes to install updates, those apps won't be updated. It will make a confusing mess for your friend and opens up the system to vulnerabilities since those apps won't be patched.
Personally I would never want a computer (or any device) which has not been securely wiped and have the OS reinstalled fresh.
Yes, I was only thinking if the OP is data constrained the OS included Apps could be preserved along with the OS... I have to save data up for months just to down load one of the latest OSes. :(
Thank you, dialabrain. Very helpful. Guess I'll be wiping!
Thank you. I don't want to do anything illegal, just thought all these old programs, Word, Excel, etc., could still be useful.
You're welcome.
LibreOffice is a free open source option alternative to MS Office.
Erase data, not apps to give away MacBookPro
