{"id":51005,"date":"2026-02-17T16:25:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51005"},"modified":"2026-02-19T14:48:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:48:34","slug":"macos-repair-assistant-replaces-apple-diagnostics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/17\/macos-repair-assistant-replaces-apple-diagnostics\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Repair Assistant Replaces Apple Diagnostics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2026\/02\/15\/last-week-on-my-mac-repair-assistant-has-replaced-diagnostics\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2026\/02\/15\/last-week-on-my-mac-repair-assistant-has-replaced-diagnostics\/\">\n<p>[Y]ou&rsquo;ll then be invited to choose from the available diagnostic suites according to your Mac&rsquo;s hardware, from:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mac Resource Inspector<\/strong>, to test the main Mac hardware over a period of 1-7 minutes;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Display Anomalies<\/strong>, for any built-in LCD panel;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keyboard<\/strong>, only when built-in;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Trackpad<\/strong>, only when built-in;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Touch ID<\/strong>, for any built-in Touch ID sensor;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Audio<\/strong>, to verify audio output using a set of test tones.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Currently these are run individually and there&rsquo;s no means to run them all in sequence.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>This is a huge improvement on Apple Diagnostics, but there&rsquo;s one slight glitch. Previous results from diagnostic testing were recorded in the Diagnostics section of System Information, but not those from Repair Assistant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>As he says, the <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/102550\">documention<\/a> is unhelpful and vague. Note that <em>Repair<\/em> Assistant is different from <em>Recovery<\/em> Assistant, which also debuted in Tahoe.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/18\/tahoes-new-recovery-assistant\/\">Tahoe&rsquo;s New Recovery Assistant<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/10\/macos-tahoe-26-rc\/\">macOS Tahoe 26 RC<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"macos-repair-assistant-replaces-apple-diagnostics-update-2026-02-19\">Update (<a href=\"#macos-repair-assistant-replaces-apple-diagnostics-update-2026-02-19\">2026-02-19<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2026\/02\/16\/an-illustrated-guide-to-recovery-on-apple-silicon-macs-2-0\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2026\/02\/16\/an-illustrated-guide-to-recovery-on-apple-silicon-macs-2-0\/\">\n<p>There have been substantial changes made to Recovery for Apple silicon Macs in recent versions of macOS. This article guides you through its increasing complexities, using the road map below.<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s one overriding caution: you will come across two different features with the same name. When you click on <strong>Options<\/strong> in the opening screen, that opens <strong>Recovery Assistant<\/strong>, where you select the user and authenticate to gain access to the Recovery app with its window of four options. If you open the <strong>Utilities<\/strong> menu in that, you&rsquo;ll see a command <strong>Recovery Assistant<\/strong>, which opens another app that calls itself <strong>Device Recovery Assistant<\/strong>, but is generally referred to simply as Recovery Assistant, although it&rsquo;s not the same as the other Recovery Assistant at all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Oakley: [Y]ou&rsquo;ll then be invited to choose from the available diagnostic suites according to your Mac&rsquo;s hardware, from: Mac Resource Inspector, to test the main Mac hardware over a period of 1-7 minutes; Display Anomalies, for any built-in LCD panel; Keyboard, only when built-in; Trackpad, only when built-in; Touch ID, for any built-in Touch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-02-17T21:25:10Z","apple_news_api_id":"d990b38d-b8ed-47cc-9073-c75b98a983c9","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-02-19T19:48:37Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A2ZCzjbjtR8yQc8dbmKmDyQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2770,164,30,2088,2742,2886],"class_list":["post-51005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-diagnostics","tag-documentation","tag-mac","tag-macos-recovery","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-repair-assistant"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51026,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51005\/revisions\/51026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}