With Internet Recovery Mode, you can reinstall macOS and troubleshoot issues in the unfortunate scenario of your Mac’s startup disk having become corrupted or completely unreadable. In addition to the startup volume, which holds a bootable copy of the operating system along with your applications and data, your Mac’s disk contains a hidden recovery partition that you can boot from in order to reinstall macOS, perform a quick check of connected disks, and more.īut what if the built-in recovery partition gets damaged, for instance? Enter Internet Recovery Mode (or macOS Recovery over the Internet), an Internet-based version of Recovery Mode found on Macs, which loads recovery tools from Apple’s servers.