Remember when you needed to use various keyboard shortcuts to boot your Mac into Recovery Mode, or to reset your PRAM? If you have a Mac with an Intel chipset, you still need to remember these shortcuts. However, if you have a new M1 Mac (I’m not jealous of those of you who purchased one, not at all!), it appears that you can forget those shortcuts.
According to an Apple support document, you now access the various boot modes by holding down the power button for 10 seconds. You’ll then see a new Recovery Options screen that shows your boot drive and an Options icon that will show you the various boot modes that are available. All the boot modes you are used to are there, plus a few new ones.
So to sum up, booting into Recovery mode on an M1 Mac no longer requires memorizing keyboard shortcuts. I have to admit it’s going to take a while before I unlearn these shortcuts, but this is progress I suppose.
Oh, and if you do own one of these M1 Macs, please hesitate to tell me, even though I’m really not jealous of you at all. Really.
This is definitely progress. Ideally a person uses these recovery mode options so infrequently that it’s not convenient to memorize them. I know I always had to look up the obscure modifiers.
Aside from that, I also had trouble with my bluetooth keyboard connecting in time for the system to notice which modifier keys were down. I often had to break out an old USB keyboard just to troubleshoot.
Building all these special boot options into the power button so they are always (and more easily) accessible is a good idea.