We've talked quite a lot about Recovery OS, an underestimated feature of OS X that makes it easier to troubleshoot your Mac even if it refuses to start up properly.
But as you'll see for yourself in this post, Recovery OS is but one of the more than dozen different ways to start up your computer, aside from OS X's regular startup mode. In this tutorial, we'll list all the ways you can start up your Mac and detail each one.
For those of you who have wondered about the many ways you can start up your Mac, here's a list of the Mac startup keyboard shortcuts you can invoke to access handy macOS features, which are only available at boot time.
Most of the time, your Mac just works—until it refuses to start up properly due to an unforeseen system error, a misbehaving app, a broken system component, and whatnot. Beyond system errors, different people have different needs when it comes to starting up their computers.
For example, you could be a pro user who dual boots between macOS and Windows on a daily basis. Others might wonder about booting a Mac from a disk other than their designated startup disk. Or perhaps you're looking to isolate the cause of a software issue in the macOS Safe Mode or boot straight into Recovery OS as the last option?
We previously discussed how booting your Mac into macOS' Safe Mode can help troubleshoot various issues with your computer. In more obscure situations and borderline cases, however, Safe Mode may not be enough to understand why your Mac freezes or crashes during the system boot process.
Enter macOS Verbose Mode.
Not only does Verbose Mode makes it easy to access detailed status messages as your Mac is starting up, but also lets you see what's really going on behind the scenes and watch as macOS loads kernel extensions and other startup items.
In this tutorial, we're going to cover booting your Mac in macOS'Â Verbose Mode, explain in which situations it might come in handy and give you some handy tips related to using Verbose Mode.