How to boot macOS into Recovery Mode – from the command line

Sometimes, especially with only an external usb keyboard available, it’s difficult to boot into the integrated recovery mode of macOS.

The normal way

Normally you simply press „Command and r“ at the beginning of the boot up of the Mac. Easy peasy.

If that doesn’t work, because for instance if the internal keyboard is fried or such…, you can do it like this:

sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused"
sudo reboot

When you’re done in Recovery mode, choose the startup drive from the top-left menu entry or use this:

nvram -d recovery-boot-mode