On the left side of the window, you’ll see all mounted volumes. RELATED: 8 Mac System Features You Can Access in Recovery Mode How to Partition Drives and Format Partitionsĭisk Utility shows internal drives and connected external drives (like USB drives), as well as disk image files (.DMG files) that you can mount and access as drives. This allows you to use Disk Utility to wipe or repartition your boot drive, reinstall macOS, restore files from a Time Machine backup, access Terminal, and more. In Recovery Mode, macOS runs a special sort of recovery environment.

Once you’re in Recovery Mode, select “Disk Utility” from the macOS Utilities window to get started. On older Intel Mac models, restart and hold Command+R as the Mac boots boots.

On modern Apple Silicon Mac models this is accessed by shutting down your computer and then starting it up by pressing and holding the power (Touch ID) button and selecting “Options” when the menu loads. You can also access Disk Utility in Recovery Mode. To access the Disk Utility in macOS, just press Command+Space to open Spotlight search, type “Disk Utility” into the search box, and then press Enter. Alternatively, open a Finder window, click Applications in the sidebar, double-click the Utilities folder, and then double-click Disk Utility. You can also use macOS Launchpad, click the Other folder, and then click Disk Utility.

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