How to Start up Your Apple Silicon M1 Mac into Safe Mode?

• Dec 09, 2020
• By Celia Swift

Wondering how to start up into safe mode on an Apple Silicon powered Mac? No matter what your purpose is for, we will explain how to do it step by step here. At the end of this article, you may have a clear understanding of how to boot into safe mode on Apple Silicon.

1. Make sure your Apple Silicon M1 Mac is powered off now. You can click the Apple menu > click Shut Down option. Wait for a few seconds.

2. Press the Power button and keep holding down for about 10 seconds until the Startup options window appear. When you see the Startup options, you can release the Power button. And then, select the Startup disk.

3. Press and hold the Shift key on the keyboard > click the option of Continue in Safe Mode > release the Shift key.

4. Next, your Mac will boot into Safe Mode. To make sure if your Mac is in safe mode, the simple way is that if there are red words of ‘Safe Mode‘ in the upper right corner of the interface. And then enter your user account and password to log in.

Till now, you’ve been into Safe Mode on your Apple Silicon M1 Mac. In safe mode, you can identify if the issues you’ve been always suffering with still occur. If not, maybe there are some issues with the startup items. You just need to remove all of those apps from login items through System Preferences. If you want to know more about how to delete a login item, refer to: click Apple menu > click System Preferences > click Users & Groups > click Login Items > select all of the login items, then click the “–” Remove button > click Apple menu > click Restart.

However, if the issue still occurs in safe mode, one of the common-used way to troubleshoot is to restore your Mac to factory setting. Wondering how to restore your macOS to the factory settings?  Refer to how to restore Mac guide here.