Make Startup Disk Mac

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You set your Mac or Macbook which disk to start up from when more than one startup disk is connected. This works for USB drives including the NinjaStik

  • Restart your Mac. When it’s booting up (right after the chime sound), press and hold Option key until you see a screen with an option to select the startup disk. Select Install macOS Big Sur and click continue. Let the installer load.
  • You can make your Mac start up from a CD or DVD, a network volume, a different disk, or another operating system. To do so, you change your startup disk. Important: If you have a Mac with an Apple T2 chip, added security features may need to be set in order to change the startup disk.

For 2018 to 2020 Macs with the Secure Boot T2 Chip, see the 2020 Macbook Pro Boot from USB instructions.

A “startup disk” is a volume or partition of a drive that contains a bootable operating system.

Such items can increase your Mac’s startup time and decrease its performance. Plus, sometimes when you remove an application or a service, it leaves a login item with a broken link. These broken login items are completely useless, cause unwanted messages, and waste your Mac's resources (because they look for non-existent applications).

You can set your Mac to automatically use a specific startup volume, or you can temporarily override this choice at startup.

Set the default startup disk
Make startup disk mac
You can change the startup disk your Mac automatically uses from System Preferences.
  1. From the Apple menu choose System Preferences.
  2. Click the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences, or choose View > Startup Disk.
  3. Select your startup disk from the list of available volumes.

The next time you start up or restart your computer, your Mac starts up using the operating system on the selected volume.

Temporarily change your startup disk with Startup Manager

Startup Manager allows you to pick a volume to start from while the computer is starting up.

Use these steps to choose a startup disk with Startup Manager:

  1. Turn on or restart your Mac.
  2. Immediately press and hold the Option key. After a few seconds, the Startup Manager appears. If you don’t see the volume you want to use, wait a few moments for Startup Manager to finish scanning connected drives.
  3. Use your mouse or trackpad, or left and right arrow keys to select the volume you want to use.
  4. Double-click or press the Return key to start up your Mac from the volume you selected.

If you have an optical drive connected to your computer, you can insert an installation disc to see it in Startup Manager. You can also attach FireWire or USB external hard drives that contain an operating system to add to the list of startup volumes.

Startup Manager automatically adds bootable volumes as you connect them.

Restart in OS X from Boot Camp

Make Boot Disk Mac Yosemite

Startup

If you have started up your Mac in Windows using Boot Camp, you can use the Boot Camp system tray to switch your startup disk default back to OS X.

  1. In Windows, click the Boot Camp icon in the system tray.
  2. From the menu that appears, choose Restart in OS X.

Start from OS X Recovery

You can also start your Mac from OS X Recovery or Internet Recovery if your Mac was manufactured after 2011.

To start your Mac from the Recovery System, use these steps:

  1. Start up or restart your computer.
  2. Hold down the Command and R keys on your keyboard until you see the Apple logo appear onscreen.

If you don’t see a volume listed

If you don’t see the volume you want to start your computer from, check the following:

Make Startup Disk Mac

  • If you’re using an external drive, make sure it’s connected and turned on.
  • Make sure you’ve installed an operating system, like OS X or Windows on the drive you’re trying to start from. Volumes that don’t contain a valid operating system aren’t listed in Startup Disk or Startup Manager.
  • If you’ve installed an operating system on a drive but it isn’t listed, the volume you’re trying to start from might need repair. If the volume contains OS X, start your computer from OS X Recovery and use Disk Utility to repair the volume, or reinstall OS X on the volume using the Recovery System.
  • Depending on the Mac you are using and the version of OS X that is installed, the Recovery System volume (Recovery HD) might not show up in Startup Manager. Press Command-R during startup to start your Mac from the Recovery System.

For 2018 / 2019 Macbook Pro with the Secure Boot T2 Chip, see the 2018 Macbook Pro Boot from USB instructions.

What are startup items?

Startup items, or login items, are services and applications that launch every time you start your Mac. These are applications that sneak into startup items without notice, never asking if you need or want them there. This way you may end up with a dozen apps launching as soon as you turn on your Mac, weighing heavily on its processor and memory capacities and slowing it down. Such items can increase your Mac’s startup time and decrease its performance.

Plus, sometimes when you remove an application or a service, it leaves a login item with a broken link. These broken login items are completely useless, cause unwanted messages, and waste your Mac's resources (because they look for non-existent applications). Whether you're running macOS Catalina or El Capitan, or earlier — it's all the same, so just read on.

So, let's go over how to take control of login items, and how to get rid of unwanted, broken or hidden startup items.

Make Startup Disk Mac

How to disable startup programs?

Do you want to stop programs from running at startup? There’s an easy way to remove programs from startup and get your Mac to load faster on launch. The fastest way to turn off startup items on Mac is an app like CleanMyMac X.

  1. Download CleanMyMac for free.
  2. Launch the app.
  3. Open Optimization tab.
  4. Click on Login items.
  5. From the list of apps, disable the ones you don’t need on startup.
  6. Done!

How to change startup programs manually?

Disabling Mac startup programs is possible manually. Therefore, if you have some time and would like to do it yourself, follow the steps below.

Your login items are listed in settings. One of the easiest ways to control startup items is inside System Preferences > Users & Groups.

  1. Open System Preferences.
  2. Go to Users & Groups.
  3. Choose your nickname on the left.
  4. Choose Login items tab.
  5. Check startup programs you want to remove.
  6. Press the “–” sign below.
  7. You’re done.
  8. If you need to add an item back, press “+” and choose the app you’d like add.
  9. Then restart your Mac to see the changes.

How to fix broken startup items?

Broken Mac startup files are left there because some part of apps are left on your Mac long after you’ve moved the app to the Trash. To get rid of these parts and to fix your startup, you’re going to need CleanMyMac again. First, you need to check if they’re among startup items and disable them if so. You can do it following the instructions above. Then you need to remove app leftovers. CleanMyMac works fine on macOS High Sierra and earlier OS.

Make Bootable Disk Mac High Sierra

  1. Launch CleanMyMac.
  2. Choose Uninstaller tab.
  3. Scroll through the list of apps.
  4. If you spot any app that you’ve deleted, check them.
  5. Delete the app leftovers you’ve chosen.

You can also find and remove broken login items with the help of System Junk module:

  1. Choose System Junk tab.
  2. Click Scan.
  3. Review details and click Clean.

Finally, you need to clean your macOS startup items through launch services:

  1. Open Maintenance tab.
  2. Choose Rebuild Launch Services.
  3. Hit Run.
  4. Done.

Once you do it, all broken app data on your Mac will be fixed.

Remove daemons and agents from startup process

If speaking of files, first go to the system folder /Library/StartUpItems. Here you’ll find all the startup files that are being launched with the system. You can delete the login item you think is necessary if you’re totally sure what you are doing.

Also, the /Library/LaunchDaemons folder contains a bunch of preference files that define how the application that is being launched along with the system should work. You might want to delete some of these files as well if you know you don’t need them and removing them is safe.

The /Library/LaunchAgents contains preference files responsible for the apps that launch during the login process (not the startup).

Make Mac Startup Disk From Windows

The above-mentioned folders contain app-related files. However, you can also check system folders to review whether you need some of the system applications to be running on startup:

  1. /System/Library/LaunchDaemons - note that besides preference files this folder contains other important system items that are recommended to keep untouched.
  2. /System/Library/LaunchAgents - most probably, you won’t also find anything worth removing in this folder, however, keeping this location in mind might help you find files related to a problematic app that causes troubles on Mac startup. If you have a problematic application that messes about on login, you can try to trace it back from this folder.

But, if you’re looking for simple ways to remove login items, we suggest using a professional Mac utility. Download CleanMyMac X for free and make unwanted and broken login items a thing of the past.