Cannot boot into Safe Mode

The instructions on the "How to use safe mode on your Mac" article say:


  1. Shut down your Mac. Check.
  2. Turn on Mac, hold power button till you see the startup options window. Check.
  3. Select your startup disk, then press and hold the Shift key while clicking “Continue in Safe Mode.”


Fail. I don't get "Continue in Safe Mode." I'm pressing the Shift key, and nothing. Just the disk icon picture thing and a Continue button. I click Continue anyway, and I get a fast, regular boot.


Please help. TIA.


Why am I doing this? Problems.


Finder window disappeared, then quickly reappeared with the spinning beach ball. Which wasn't spinning. Then jerked a few partial rotations, and finally cleared up with the Finder window coming back.


Time machine disks going AWOL for no apparent reason after a dozen or more backups.

Unmountable until I do a power cycle on them.


Time Machine icon turning white, sometimes when I click it., sometimes on its own.


Time Machine preferences window just vanishes. Can't bring it back up. Did a control-down-arrow. There it is!


I figure a Safe Boot might fix at least one of these.


Oh, and I had a kernel panic Feb 26. Happens again and I will work solely on that. I pray it was a fluke.


weather.gov pages occasionally break, most often on FF, but even once in a while on Safari. Oh, I think it even happened on my iPhone once.


And now I can't even do a safe boot. Can someone help me, please! TIA!


macOS 12.6.3 (Monterey)

24" M1 Mac purchased Aug 2022.

iMac 24″

Posted on Mar 5, 2023 7:32 PM

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Mar 5, 2023 9:34 PM in response to betaneptune

Well, I finally managed to do a safe boot. I ran "first aid" from recovery. Rebooted, picked my disk, press Shift, and I got the advertised "Continue in Safe Mode" button!


Another benefit is that I can now Enter Time Machine from my home directory. I used to have to start elsewhere, like Documents or Desktop.


And fortunately, it booted fast into safe mode!

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Cannot boot into Safe Mode

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