Tahoe’s New Recovery Assistant
If your Mac experiences an issue that prevents it from starting up properly, macOS Tahoe includes a new Recovery Assistant that can attempt to identify the issue and resolve it, according to an Apple support document published this week.
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Recovery Assistant is also available from the Utilities menu in macOS Recovery mode.
Previously:
Update (2025-09-29): Howard Oakley:
DRA requires an internet connection to function. If you’re asked to choose a connection, opt for a Wi-Fi network if possible.
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When your Mac restarts, it may show a notification that you need to recover iCloud data. If so, open System Settings and you should see a new item in its sidebar to Recover iCloud Data.
Although in a different league, our novel treatment of the week is Device Recovery Assistant, as I showed here on Friday. It’s sufficiently new that Apple hasn’t quite gone firm on what to call it. Its sole account refers to it as Recovery Assistant, in accordance with the menu command used to open the app in Recovery mode. But when it’s running, it claims to be Device Recovery Assistant, which sounds like it might also be good for your iPhone or iPad, but isn’t. That’s a similar feature added to iOS and iPadOS 26, as explained here.
I’m still a little wary of magic healing tools in Recovery mode. The first is there even now, waiting to catch those who’ve taken AI a little too seriously, and think running
repairHomePermissionsmight be a good idea. Whatever you do, please don’t try this one at home, as its effects can be devastating.[…]
Far from repairing them, each time I have tried this it locks me out of every folder in my Home folder and wreaks havoc elsewhere.
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(Device) Recovery Assistant doesn’t appear to do anything so disastrous, but Apple is completely opaque as to what it actually does.
Update (2025-10-22): Howard Oakley:
All of us at some time or other find our mind has gone blank and we can’t remember the password we’ve typed in so often before. Or the person who did know that password may no longer be there to recall it for us. At times like these we may need to gain access to a locked Mac. This article looks at how you can do that in an Intel Mac with a T2 chip, or an Apple silicon Mac, running Big Sur or later, in particular macOS Tahoe.
