I recently needed to wipe my old macbook before returning it. The macbook was affected by the battery issue (described in an Apple note here) and its time was due.

I’ve already got all of my mac backed-up. I’ve never actually needed to “clean up” a mac before, so it was worth a Google. My concerns were:

  • How can I make sure that none of my files are left on the device?
  • How can I make sure that none of my logins could be used?

And after a bit of looking, I’ll be honest, Apple doco is pretty good. (When it is good.) Here are the two articles that I used. The instructions are basically Boot into MacOS Recovery, Click 'delete'.