How do I get to the boot menu on a Mac mini?

Turn on your Mac with Apple silicon and continue to press and hold the power button until you see the startup options window.

How do I make a Mac boot from USB?

Press and hold the “Option” key when you hear the startup sounds—this will bring you to the Startup Manager. Once the Startup Manager appears, you can release the Option key. Startup Manager will then start scanning your device for drives it can boot from, including your USB.

Can Mac Mini M1 boot from external drive?

The fresh information here is that an M1-based Mac relies on its internal SSD to allow external drives to boot. If the internal SSD has failed or been entirely erased—it contains several hidden volumes—you can no longer boot from an otherwise valid volume on an external drive.

How do I do a fresh install on my Mac Mini?

Choose Apple menu > Shut Down, press and hold the power button until “Loading startup options” appears, select Options, click Continue, then follow the onscreen instructions. In the Recovery app window, select Reinstall for your macOS release, click Continue, then follow the onscreen instructions.

Can Mac mini boot from external SSD?

Luckily, you can use an external SSD as your startup disk to run macOS and all your data from that. It will make your Mac 10 to 40 times faster for storage, and in turn, make your entire Mac system much faster.

How do I boot my Mac Mini 2018 from an external hard drive?

If you want your machine to always boot from the external hard drive:

  1. Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences , then click Startup Disk .
  2. Click the lock icon and enter your administrator password.
  3. Select your startup disk, then restart your Mac.

Can I use an external SSD as a boot drive Mac?

Can you boot an M1 Mac from external SSD?

Unlike a T2 Mac, M1 Macs don’t set one boot security policy for the Mac, but a policy for each bootable disk. This is attractive, as it means that you can still ensure that, when it boots from its internal SSD it does so in Full Security, but your M1 Mac can be more relaxed when it boots from an external disk instead.