macOS Tahoe Features a New Recovery Assistant

[MacRumors]

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.

If your Mac experiences certain behaviors during startup, Apple says the computer might automatically restart and open Recovery Assistant. To use the utility, click on the "Continue" button in the window and follow the on-screen steps.

When the recovery process is complete, Recovery Assistant will indicate that it recovered your Mac successfully, or that it was unable to recover your Mac, or that no known issues were found. Click on "Restart Mac" to complete the process.

If your Mac starts up successfully, Apple says you might be notified to recover your iCloud data.

If your Mac does not start up successfully, it has an issue that Recovery Assistant cannot resolve, and you can then move on to other troubleshooting steps.

Recovery Assistant is also available from the Utilities menu in macOS Recovery mode.

As we reported on earlier this year, iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 add a similar Recovery Assistant tool to the iPhone and iPad, and Apple published a support document this week with more details about how the feature works on those devices.

Article Link: macOS Tahoe Features a New Recovery Assistant

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Will it recover the corner radius’ and pathetic lines everywhere?

 

[ApAx]

Apple: "We made a tool that may or may not run and may or may not fix an issue you may or may not have, and when that may or may not happen, good luck!"

 

[!!!]

Reminds me of the stupid Windows diagnostic assistants that never actually solved any problems. The fact that Apple now uploads a ton of data, which is presumably a sysdump and includes insane amounts of personal info, reminds me of the Windows 10 spyware, and how it will "collect data" about a process if you try to force-quit it.

 

[AppleTO]

Hopefully it works better than Microsoft’s.

 

[anshuvorty]

Reminds me of the stupid Windows diagnostic assistants that never actually solved any problems. The fact that Apple now uploads a ton of data, which is presumably a sysdump and includes insane amounts of personal info, reminds me of the Windows 10 spyware, and how it will "collect data" about a process if you try to force-quit it.

Windows 11 is worse - I have kept my critical system back on Windows 10 because it doesn't include the insane amount of telemetry that Win 11 has and also Microsoft, from time to time, forces Windows 11 Home users to switch to MSA accounts, which I hate!!

 

[edubfromktown]

No encryption here (I'm never signed into Apple when I install an update).

Carbon Copy Cloner rollback continues to be break glass way out. So far Tahoe is ok on my M1 Max Studio and M3 Pro 14" MBP.

 

[JohnC1959]

Apple: "We made a tool that may or may not run and may or may not fix an issue you may or may not have, and when that may or may not happen, good luck!"

Well if they had a tool that 100% guaranteed success that WOULD be amazing. An industry first.

 

[Danilamak]

This might be bad sign. From what I seen how arm system different behind x86, I’m afraid they may want to lock it down, and stick to iOS downgrade policy.

This though goes from wondering what they will do massive, in next release when they ditching x86 architecture.

 

[Danilamak]

From what I seen how arm system different behind x86

I’ll explain, for example on m1 MBA I can’t fully wipe hard drive compared to x86

How I know this? On x86 after you wipe drive you had small utility that can download from internet full recovery

On ARM you can’t wipe recovery it’s always there, and you can’t do some sort of complex format drive, for truly deleting files from drive.

 

[Populus]

I’ll explain, for example on m1 MBA I can’t fully wipe hard drive compared to x86

How I know this? On x86 after you wipe drive you had small utility that can download from internet full recovery

On ARM you can’t wipe recovery it’s always there, and you can’t do some sort of complex format drive, for truly deleting files from drive.

Yeah, this is a worry for me as well. I’m one of those who perform a complete wipe and clean install every x months or yearly. The day I get my new M5 Mac mini, I’m really not sure how will I perform a clean install every year…

 

[matt_and_187_like_this]

just got a new tahoe 26.0 on the developer beta. rc2?

 

[Sippincider]

Reminds me of the stupid Windows diagnostic assistants that never actually solved any problems.

Or the Classic MacOS "Error type 11" screen that didn't help either.

Maybe they can bring back the cannonball icon with the lit fuse? 🤦‍♂️

 

[JosephAW]

Does macOS 26 put the user volumes in encrypted volume mode now?
Most likely the solution will always be to erase and recover from Time Machine.
You would think with the macOS on a separate partition that repair would be simpler but usually when I have trouble it’s with the user data volume so corrupted that it can’t even boot up. Went through that with Sequoia update wiped out my data volume and fortunately I had a back up from two weeks ago.

 

[JosephAW]

Wondering how this will affect us users that store our user volume on a external drive, is it even possible now with 26?

 

[platinumaqua]

I’ll explain, for example on m1 MBA I can’t fully wipe hard drive compared to x86

How I know this? On x86 after you wipe drive you had small utility that can download from internet full recovery

On ARM you can’t wipe recovery it’s always there, and you can’t do some sort of complex format drive, for truly deleting files from drive.

ARM Macs' architecture is closer to an embedded device (like iPhone) than a general purpose computer.

It's strange to need another computer to make it work if the built-in drive gets formatted.

 

[Hajj.david]

I’ll explain, for example on m1 MBA I can’t fully wipe hard drive compared to x86

How I know this? On x86 after you wipe drive you had small utility that can download from internet full recovery

On ARM you can’t wipe recovery it’s always there, and you can’t do some sort of complex format drive, for truly deleting files from drive.

This is incorrect. It is exactly the same on ARM you can wipe the drive fully and even do a security erase. The recovery IS internet recovery exact same as before

 

[Hajj.david]

ARM Macs' architecture is closer to an embedded device (like iPhone) than a general purpose computer.

It's strange to need another computer to make it work if the built-in drive gets formatted.

Hold the power button then boot into internet recovery. You only need another mac if the internal drive is replaced and it has a blank NAND that isnt locked in with your mac. You can reformat a million times without another mac.

 

[Hajj.david]

Yeah, this is a worry for me as well. I’m one of those who perform a complete wipe and clean install every x months or yearly. The day I get my new M5 Mac mini, I’m really not sure how will I perform a clean install every year…

Hold the power button, recovery mode, disk utility, wipe, restart, install macOS via internet recovery. Same as before just hold the button vs the keyboard shortcut

 

[jphall]

Will it recover the corner radius’ and pathetic lines everywhere?

lol

I really dislike how the window radius corners look in screenshots. I think of square windows on production computers, not a curve that allows the light background to show around the non-square window! Poor description, but here's the screenshot of it. Don't like it!

edit: this is not new to Tahoe, but much worse than it's been. While I use my iPhone for work, I'm ok with its more easygoing interface than I'd want on my production Mac!

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Reminds me of the stupid Windows diagnostic assistants that never actually solved any problems. The fact that Apple now uploads a ton of data, which is presumably a sysdump and includes insane amounts of personal info, reminds me of the Windows 10 spyware, and how it will "collect data" about a process if you try to force-quit it.

I love the irony that macOS has turned into Windows Vista so many years after they absolutely slandered it.

 

[johnnytravels]

If it’s anything like Apple‘s WiFi/network diagnostics/repair tool… 🫣

 

[svish]

Hope it functions well whenever it is required. Don't want anything to happen to my Mac and hopefully I won't have to use it.

 

[djplong]

If it will fix the upgrade error that cause the "Apps" app to not load the apps (click it and get nothing) nor list any newly downloaded apps (got a small game from Apple Arcade - when it was done downloading, I saw the Apps icon do the little bunny-hop - but clicking on Apps still resulted in nothing) I'll be at least partially happy.

 

[Hajj.david]

I love the irony that macOS has turned into Windows Vista so many years after they absolutely slandered it.

I'd argue Windows Vista was the best OS Microsoft created so long as you had sufficiently good hardware. Like macOS it had a bunch of great built in apps and really cool features like areo and live wallpapers. In Windows 7 they cut like half of the features in Vista. Not to mention the UI looked better in Vista. I "downgraded" from 7 to Vista for as long as I could run it. Especially with service pack 2 it ran flawlessly.

The problem was not the OS, the problem was the rollout and the certification program where they labeled absolutely garbage computers as "Windows Vista Compatible"