Is 'macOS recovery' better than 'erase all content and settings' on Mac?

saham238 wrote:

Hi,

I wanted to know whether 'macOS recovery' is better than 'erase all content and settings'?

That depends on what you are trying to do.

If you plan to give away or sell your Mac, "erase all content and settings" is the best approach, this is explained in

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

If you don't or can't use that option, you have to follow a series of steps as explained in the article above, and you have to follow each of them exactly. Much easier to do it all in one step.

For instance, even when you erase/format a Mac from Recovery, it may maintain a connection to your Apple ID and also it may still store in NVRAM access codes to your network. That is why the erase NVRAM step is important, but that is done automatically when you do the one step "erase all content and settings." So if you erased your Mac completely but did not properly reset NVRAM, the next user would be able to connect to your WiFi network because that setting/passcode is stored there.

steve626 wrote:

if you erased your Mac completely but did not properly reset NVRAM, the next user would be able to connect to your WiFi network because that setting/passcode is stored there.

I have reset PRAM many times but then the Mac always automatically connected to my WiFi. So I guess that info is stored in Keychain/Passwords, and indeed Passwords.app does show several such passwords to known networks. The only thing I usually do after PRAM reset is to re-select a Startup Disk.

To quote Apple Support,

macOS Recovery is your computer’s built-in recovery system, with utilities to reinstall macOS, repair or erase your startup disk, restore from a Time Machine backup, and more.