Command R not working! How to reinstall macOS if Recovery won’t work

In the event of a serious problem with your Mac, you may need to reinstall your Mac operating system. There’s a simple way to do this using your Mac Recovery partition or via Mac Internet Recovery. You can access the Recovery mode via the keyboard combination Command + R on an Intel Mac (the process on an M1 Mac is slightly different as we will discuss below).

But what do you do if Mac recovery mode isn’t working or Command + R doesn’t work?

We’ll look at the best solutions to these problems below. If you want to learn how to reinstall Mac OS using Recovery Mode we cover that in a separate article (via the link above).

What is Mac Recovery?

A quick word on what Mac Recovery mode can do and how it works.

Most people don’t really think about their hard drives (well, SSD these days) in terms of partitions. They just see the whole drive as one thing. A hard drive is typically a single volume, but it is then split up into multiple areas, known as partitions or volumes. Think of your hard drive as the house, and the partitions as different rooms. (Read:  How to partition a Mac hard drive or SSD, or create a APFS volume for more information.)

You’re used to only seeing one room in the house, the one which has your Desktop, Folders and Applications. But there are actually four partitions, and one is used in extreme cases where you may want to completely reinstall the operating system macOS (or Mac OS X on really old Macs).

Even if you completely wipe your Mac, and start again from scratch, the Recovery partition should still be there to make it possible to reinstall macOS, restore from your Time Machine backup, and repair or erase your hard disk. We look in detail at what you can do in Recovery mode here.

It’s a problem if you need to reinstall the operating system from scratch and the Recovery partition is missing or for some reason you can’t access. A problem, but luckily there are solutions available.

Back in the days before Mac OS X Lion launched in 2011 there wasn’t a Recovery partition, instead you needed to have a physical disc with the software on it and an optical drive to insert it into. These days it’s rare to find a Mac with a optical drive, let alone find someone who has their original discs – not that Macs have shipped with install discs in recent times. We’ll look at what to do if you fit into this category later in this article.

Why is Command R not working?

There are a few reasons why you might find that Command + R doesn’t work and your Mac won’t start up in Recovery Mode:

• Number one reason right now is that your Mac is a M1 Mac – one of the new Macs introduced since November 2020 which uses one of Apple’s new processors rather than Intel. If that sounds like you there is a new way to enter Recovery on an M1 Mac. We cover this in new ways to do things on M1 Macs, but we’ll also discuss it below. 
• If your Mac is really old – as in so old it’s running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or older – it will not have a Recovery partition, the only way to reinstall the OS is to use the discs that shipped with the Mac. We’ll look at what to do in that case later.
• If your Mac is running a version of macOS older than Sierra (which launched in 2016) then you won’t have all the Recovery options available that you may have heard of.
• The keyboard might be faulty or your Mac may not connect to it via Bluetooth – in which case, try using another – we suggest one that plugs in directly.
• Something might have corrupted your Recovery partition, or you might have deleted it while replacing your hard drive, or installing Windows via Boot Camp.

How to enter Recovery when Command+R doesn’t work

Follow these steps to find out why Recovery mode isn’t working for you.

Step 1: Try again

The first thing to try is to restart your Mac and press Command and R again as you boot up. It may work the second time.

Step 2: Check your keyboard

You may also want to check your keyboard (especially if it’s a Bluetooth keyboard). Try using a wired keyboard if possible. Perhaps you can’t enter Recovery because your keyboard isn’t working.

Step 3: Make sure you are using the right Recovery command on an M1 Mac

You may also be using the wrong command for your Mac. If you have an M1 Mac then you should follow these steps to start in Recovery mode:

How to enter Recovery on an M1 Mac:

1. Turn off the Mac.
2. Press the on button – and keep it pressed.
3. When the Apple logo appears text will appear informing you that if you continue holding the power button you will be able to access startup options.
4. Eventually you will be able to select Options > Continue and this will open up Recovery.

If Recovery mode isn’t working on your M1 Mac then try ‘fallback recovery mode’. This is a new feature for M1 Macs (detailed by Apple here). It esseicnally replaces the Internet Recovery option found on Intel Macs.

To enter Fallback Recovery Mode on an M1 Mac you need to:

• Double press the power button: first press it, release, and then press and hold down the power button.

This gives you access to a second copy of the recoveryOS.

Step 4: Try alternative Recovery options for Intel Macs

There are a few other ways you might be able to force your Mac to start up in recovery mode if Command + R isn’t working for you. Apple has a couple of other commands that you could try:

You could use Internet Recovery Mode – an option that we will discuss in more detail below. This method will download a version of macOS from the internet, which might be a solution if you can’t access the Recovery partition on your Mac. We discuss Internet Recovery Mode in more detail in a section below.

• Press Option/Alt + Command + R when you boot up to enter Internet Recovery Mode.

Once you enter this mode you will be able to access an Apple server to download the version of macOS. This will be the latest macOS compatible with your Mac. Note: If you aren’t running Sierra 10.12.4 of later, this will install the version that came with your Mac.

If you don’t want to install the latest version of macOS try this:

• Shift + Option/Alt + Command R (if you are running Sierra 10.12.4 of later) will install the version of macOS that came with your Mac, or the one closest to it that is still available.

Note that if your Mac has a T2 chip there may be a simple reason why Command + R isn’t working for you. In that case:

• Option/Alt + Command + R will install the latest macOS on your Mac if you have a T2 chip.

What to do if Mac recovery mode isn’t working

Perhaps you have tried the above and had no luck. Or maybe you got into Recovery Mode only for everything to freeze up.

Perhaps your Mac’s disc is beyond repair and Recovery Mode inaccessible. In that case our article about How to recover data from a damaged Mac might be helpful. For ways to check whether your Recovery partition is broken or missing jump to this section below.

There are some other options to try before you try to fix your Recovery partition though. We explain how to use Internet Recovery on Intel Macs and Fallback Recovery on M1 Macs next. We also run through how to install macOS from a bootable USB stick below and in a separate article here: How to create a bootable USB macOS installer.

How to use Internet Recovery to reinstall macOS (Intel Macs)

Here’s what to do if you haven’t got a recovery partition on your Mac and need to reinstall macOS (in fact, even if you don’t need to reinstall macOS you probably should, because a missing Recovery Partition is not a good sign).

The first approach is to use a feature called Internet Recovery. Newer Macs are able to boot directly from an internet connection, even with no Recovery partition available. Here is how to use macOS Internet Recovery:

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Hold down Command-Option/Alt-R and press the Power button. (On some Mac keyboards the Option key will be named Alt).
3. Hold down those keys until you a spinning globe and the message “Starting Internet Recovery. This may take a while”.
4. The message will be replaced with a progress bar. Wait for it to fill. Expect it to take a while…
5. Wait for the MacOS Utilities screen to appear.
6. Click Reinstall macOS and follow the installation process.

If you have accessed Internet Recovery mode it might be a very slow process depending on your connection speed. When we experienced this problem we connected our Mac to the hub via an Ethernet cable (you may need an adapter, such as this Thunderbolt to Ethernet Adapter from Apple, £29/$29).

How to use Fallback Recovery to reinstall macOS (M1 Macs)

If there is a problem with Recovery Mode on the M1 Mac there is a new ‘fallback Recovery mode’, that is detailed by Apple here. In this case you double press the power button: first press it, release, and then press and hold down the power button.

Fallback recovery mode accesses a second copy of the recoveryOS on the SSD of the Macs with M1 Chip. Apple says the second copy is there for resiliency.

On M1:

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Press and hold the Power button and wait while your Mac starts up. 
3. Eventually you will see the Apple Logo. Once a “Loading Startup Options” message appears you can let go of the Power button.
4. Now click on Options. 
5. This will take you to the Recovery Mode.
6. Choose your language and click on Next.
7. Wait for the internet recovery screen to load.

How to restore a Mac with no Recovery partition

It is possible to restore a Mac without a recovery partition, but it can be tricky (especially on older Macs). You have a few approaches available:

• Use Internet Recovery to reinstall macOS on an Intel Mac with a missing recovery partition. Jump to this section to find out how to do that.
• Create a bootable macOS installer to install a copy of macOS from.
• Use your Time Machine backup as your start-up drive.
• You may also be able to create a Recovery partition, we look at how to do that here: How to create a Recovery partition on Mac.

We’re going to look at these options below – but first, a quick explanation of what a recovery partition is.

How to check if your Recovery partition is working

First you should check that your Mac definitely hasn’t got a working Recovery partition. It’s possible that you have been using the wrong key combination, or that your keyboard wasn’t working, for example.

As above, you need to follow the usual method to reach Recovery Mode. So, on an Intel Mac press Command + R, and on an M1 Mac press On and keep it pressed until you see Option. 

However, despite pressing these key combinations the Mac boots up to your normal view, or you’re faced with a completely blank screen, then you haven’t got a Recovery partition.

If your Mac does boot into macOS then you can at least check Terminal to see if you have a recovery partition, here’s how to do that:

1. Open Terminal.
2. Enter diskutil list.

You should see a list of all the volumes and partitions on your computer. The first drive (/dev/disk0) should have a partition (typically listed as “3” with Apple_Boot Recovery HD after it). Try using the Command-R process again.

You could also these tips to see if it makes your Recovery partition miraculously appear.

• Reset your PRAM or NVRAM: If you have an Intel Mac you could shut down your Mac and hold down Command-Option-P-R during boot. Wait for the chimes and let go. (This isn’t really an option on M1 Macs though, NVRAM does exist in M1 Macs, but it’s not the same – we do discuss how to reset it here though if you want to try: How to reset NVRAM on an M1 or Intel Mac).

Okay, so either your Recovery Partition is missing, or doesn’t work and you’ve tried everything. So it’s time to look at reinstalling macOS without it. First, if it’s an option here, you should take time to back up up your Mac using Time Machine. This will enable you to restore all your files, folders and apps once you’ve reinstalled macOS.

Create a macOS bootable installer on a flash drive

If you can’t access Internet Recovery, then you are left with the option to create a bootable installer from a flash drive (at least 12GB in size). Note that this completely erases the USB flash drive, so be careful to remove any files from it first. We cover how to create a bootable installer for macOS here, but we’ll give an overview of the method below.

The simplest way to create a USB flash installer it to use Terminal:

Open your Applications folder and look to see if you have the Install files for the version of macOS or Mac OS X you require. In the case of Sierra or High Sierra you”ll see: something like this, for example.

If you don’t have the files read about how to get older versions of macOS or Mac OS X here.

When you have got hold of the installer for the version of macOS that you require, follow these steps:

1. Attach your USB flash drive to your Mac.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Select the volume (under External) in the sidebar. The Volume is the top part, not the partition (which is underneath).
4. Click Erase.
5. Make sure it says “Untitled” in the Name field. Don’t change this. Click Erase.
6. Open Terminal.
7. Cut and paste the correct createinstallmedia text into Terminal (the code will depend on the version of macOS, so we suggest getting it from this article: createinstallmedia commands for versions of macOS. It will look something like the below image.)
8. You’ll then need to enter your admin password. And then enter “y” and press Return. It will first wipe your flash drive, then turn it into a bootable installer.

Expect to wait a while for the process to finish.

Install macOS from the bootable installer

Now you can follow these steps to use the bootable installer:

1. Make sure the bootable installer (USB flash drive) is connected to your Mac.
2. Shut down your Mac.
3. Hold down Option/Alt and press the Power button.
4. The startup device list window should appear displaying a yellow drive with Install (software name) below it.
5. Select it and press Return. Wait for the progress bar to fill.
6. Select Disk Utility.
7. Select the drive under Internal (your main hard drive).
8. Click Erase.
9. Give the drive a name; “Macintosh HD” is traditional but you can choose. Ensure that the Format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme is GUID Partition Map.
10. Click Erase.
11. Click Done.
12. Choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility.
13. Select Install macOS and click Continue.
14. Follow the install macOS options.
15. Select Macintosh HD as the installation disk, when presented, and click Install.

MacOS will now be installed on your hard drive from the bootable installer. The whole process can take around half an hour. After this has finished you will have a new installation of macOS along with a Recovery partition.

You may get the message: “This copy of the Install [macOS name] application can’t be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.” If so you need to adjust the date and time in macOS.

How to reinstall Mac OS X on an older Mac without Recovery mode

As we mentioned above, if your Mac is running Snow Leopard or older, it won’t have a Recovery partition. So if everything goes pear shaped and you need to reinstall your operating system what can you do.

If you have the original discs that shipped with the Mac, you should be able to use them.

If you don’t have those discs, you may be able to purchase them from Apple. Apple used to sell Snow Leopard until relatively recently for £19.99 but it is no longer available here. Apple does however explain how to get older OS X versions here.

You can still buy a copy of Lion from the Apple Store here, but what you will receive is a download code, rather than physical discs.

Once you have the Mac App Store on your Mac you will be able to get a newer version of macOS.