Prepping a mac for sale

By Moopie Curran, 5 February, 2023

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi,
In the past, when I've traded up my mac for a new one, I've given my old ones to family. The last time I did it, I feel like it was quite tricky, because she kept getting prompted to sign into my apple ID. So what is the best way in 2023, to transfer a mac to someone? And is there a way to do a clean install of the OS. This is a 2015 macbook, running big sir, I'm not sure it could handle ventura, I feel like I made a mistake installing big sir on it actually, but that's irrelevant.
Thanks for any pointers.

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Comments

By Igna Triay on Sunday, February 5, 2023 - 19:28

The best way to do this is to sign out of icloud, music, etc. Sign out of all the apps that are linked with your apple id, and turn find my mac off before signing out of icloud. Secondly, if you have filevault turned on, turn it off. Also, if you have a fermware password set, turn that off as well. If you don't have file vault or a fermware password set though, and you've disabled find my mac and have signed out of all the apps and services, I.e, icloud, which are linked to your apple id. Also, once you've signed out of icloud ect, on one of your other apple devices, go to settings, your name, devices, and make sure your mac isn't in the list after signing out. If it is, remove it now that you've signed out, but it shouldn't show up in the list since you've signed out out of everything. Once that's done, your free to restart the mac and hit command r to go into recovery mode. From there, erase your mac, both the macintosh hd, and macintosh hd, data via disk utility in mac os recovery. Once both macintosh hd and Macintosh hd, data, are erased. Quit disk utility to get back to the macos recovery window. From there, select, reinstall macos. This will download and install a clean copy of macos after you've erased it. Once the clean install of macos is done, insure that your on the setup screen to setup the mac, and if that's the case, your free to shut it down and give it away or cell it.

By Moopie Curran on Monday, February 6, 2023 - 00:26

Technically, a 2015 macbook can handle ventura, I think, or at least monterey. But what if I don't want that? In theory, could I just sign out of music, iCloud, find my mac, etc. then create a new admin user for my aunt who I'm giving the mac to? Then could she delete my user when she's logged in? Because I think in recovery mode, it makes you install the latest version of mac OS, which is ventura. My 2015 macbook is slower than I'd like on big sir, I don't even want to know how it would be with ventura, lol.

By Tyler on Monday, February 6, 2023 - 05:16

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

To my knowledge, Big Sur is the last version of macOS the 2015 MacBook will run. Therefore, if you erase and reinstall macOS via the Recovery partition, a new copy of Big Sur will be installed.

Technically, you could sign out of your Apple ID and create a new user account for your aunt, however I generally recommend completely resetting a Mac to factory settings before selling or giving it away. This way, the new user has a fresh copy of the operating system that they can start using, without contending with the residual data the previous user produced.

HTH

By Chris on Monday, February 6, 2023 - 05:23

The 2015 Macs are stuck on Monterey and should be fine to use until late 2024. After that, Apple will stop providing security updates, asssuming they continue to follow the pattern of supporting the current and 2 prior versions.
I agree, perform a proper clean install using macOS Recovery before giving it to someone else, and make sure you remove the Mac from your devices list and Find My for your Apple ID to prevent any issues such as Activation Lock. Performing a clean install may make the machine perform significantly better.

By Siobhan on Thursday, February 9, 2023 - 05:35

I'd just trade it in for cred or recycle the thing, fam are terrible to give to but hey do what ya want lol

By Ekaj on Saturday, February 11, 2023 - 13:44

Thank you for this, and thank you to the person who posted the linked article. My previous Mac's keyboard became somewhat unreliable, and the battery wouldn't charge. So I was going to trade that Mac in for a new one, but my personal assistant wanted it for gaming. So I gave it to him without first taking any of these steps. He is not much of a fan of Apple, but says the Mac is working okay for him. I will come back to that support article once this Mac becomes unusable for the most part.