Wiping memory of MacBook Air

[LottieLulu]

I have lent my old Macbook Air to my friend who will be giving it back to me shortly. He was desperate for a computer and I had just bought a new Macbook Air (the old one had a few issues with it but he seemed perfectly happy with it). However I don't want to have his old data on the computer as I have no interest in his personal details. So is it either a) possible to go to a 'return to factory settings' option or b) can I use the Time Machine to just return the contents of the MacBook Air to what it originally was; when I got my new one this is what I did - simply copied the old MacBook Air to the new one, but will this mean I won't be able to see anything he's downloaded onto his machine?

I'm not expecting there to be anything dodgy on there but I would rather respect his privacy!

 

[Newtons Apple]

Just restore it to factory condition. It will erase everything and reinstall the OS.

 

[LottieLulu]

Brilliant, thank you, I've just goggled that and worked out how to do it. Wish I had known that when I gave it to him, I ended up deleting all my own stuff by hand.

 

[Weaselboy]

I have lent my old Macbook Air to my friend who will be giving it back to me shortly. He was desperate for a computer and I had just bought a new Macbook Air (the old one had a few issues with it but he seemed perfectly happy with it). However I don't want to have his old data on the computer as I have no interest in his personal details. So is it either a) possible to go to a 'return to factory settings' option or b) can I use the Time Machine to just return the contents of the MacBook Air to what it originally was; when I got my new one this is what I did - simply copied the old MacBook Air to the new one, but will this mean I won't be able to see anything he's downloaded onto his machine?

I'm not expecting there to be anything dodgy on there but I would rather respect his privacy!

Just so I am clear, you have a Time Machine backup with all your data like you want and want to put that back on the Air? Just option key boot to the TM disk and use Disk Util to erase the internal drive to Mac OS Extended then quit Disk Util and click restore. That will wipe whatever your friend had on there and put all your stuff back form the backup.

 

[jimboutilier]

A wipe, reinstall of OS, and restore from time machine is very effective but time consuming and should leave your machine in the exact state it was in during your last time machine backup.

Too late for this time but if lending it to a friend I would just create a new standard (or even admin if really trusted) account on the machine for my friend to use and once it was returned I'd just delete that account.

 

[Weaselboy]

A wipe, reinstall of OS, and restore from time machine is very effective but time consuming and should leave your machine in the exact state it was in during your last time machine backup.

Too late for this time but if lending it to a friend I would just create a new standard (or even admin if really trusted) account on the machine for my friend to use and once it was returned I'd just delete that account.

You don't really need to reinstall the OS if you restore with TM. The restore will put the OS back as part of the restore.

 

[0906742]

Can I format and restore my Air 2018 to exactly the same condition as it came from the factory by holding command + R and there format hdd and factory restore it? What exactly happens by doing that? Especially I'm interested if display calibration profiles (ICC) for my display will be retained or do I lose factory calibration? If that fails for some reason, is there any way to retrieve correct display calibration (Are these individually ICC-profile calibrated or do the all come with the same ICC-profiles and display calibration is done by hardware)?

I'd like to make sure before proceeding, so any help would be appreciated.
Reason I want to do restore is that I've been testing the machine and install and tried all kind of stuff with it and never really put any of my Apple related services on during initial setup, so I would start fresh now that I have some idea what to do with the machine in the future. Also still thinking whether I want/need Macbook Pro, but at the moment I'm really leaning on keeping this as my use will be pretty basic stuff in Mac world and I mainly use my Windows desktop for heavy lifting.

Thanks for any tips in advance.