Recover a device
Three operations that clear a device, and how to pick the right one.
When a device is misbehaving, there are three ways to clear it — and they are not interchangeable. Pick by how much you want gone and whether the device still talks to your Mac.
All three live in the companion under a device's Settings → Reset, and each is behind a hold-to-confirm dialog. None of them can be undone.
Which one
Erase takes a device that still works and gives you a clean slate — it removes every app, recording, and setting, and leaves the firmware in place. Reach for it before handing a device to someone else, or to clear out a bad configuration. It runs over the live link, so the device has to be connected.
Forget pairings clears the device's Bluetooth pairings so it pairs fresh the next time. Reach for it when a connection has gone strange and you want the Bluetooth link to start over. Data and firmware are untouched. It also runs over the live link.
Reset is the heavy one: it erases the whole chip and reinstalls the firmware over USB. It is the recovery of last resort — for a device that will not connect, a firmware that will not boot, or a link that refuses to come up. Because it flashes over the cable, it works even when Bluetooth is completely dead.
Only Reset needs USB
Erase and Forget pairings both run over the live connection, so the device must be connected first. Reset speaks to the device over the USB cable directly, which is why it is the one that still works when nothing else can reach the device.
Erase
Open the device's Reset settings
In the companion, go to the device, then Settings → Reset, and choose Erase.
Hold to confirm
The dialog spells out what goes: all apps, recordings, and settings. Hold the button to confirm. The firmware stays, and the device keeps trusting your Mac — only the data is wiped.
Forget pairings
Choose Forget pairings in the same Reset section and hold to confirm. The device drops its Bluetooth bonds and pairs fresh on the next connection. Its data and firmware are left alone.
Two different “forgets”
Forget pairings clears the Bluetooth bonds stored on the device. That is different from Forget & re-trust, which drops the device's identity key that your Mac pinned — the move you make when a device was replaced or re-flashed and now presents a changed key. The companion offers Forget & re-trust at the moment it refuses the connection. See Security for how key pinning works.
Reset
Reset erases the entire chip and writes a fresh firmware over USB, then reboots. It un-pairs the device in the process, so afterward it connects like a device you have never seen.
Plug the device in over USB
The firmware is written over the cable, so the device has to be connected by USB — this is the operation that does not rely on Bluetooth.
Start Reset and hold to confirm
Choose Reset, then hold to confirm. The companion walks the device into its recovery mode and begins reinstalling.
Leave it plugged in until it finishes
The reinstall takes a few minutes and moves through several stages — erasing, writing the firmware and the audio core, then rebooting. Progress stays visible on the companion's status ribbon even if you leave the page. Do not unplug it until it is done.
If the device does not appear
Reset waits for the device to show up in recovery mode. If it does not appear on its own, hold the BOOT button and tap RST on the device to put it there by hand, then let the flow continue.
What Reset actually does
Reset performs a full-chip erase followed by a complete reflash of every image the device needs to boot — the bootloader, the main firmware, and the separate audio-core image. It talks to the device's built-in USB bootloader directly rather than over the normal secure link, which is exactly why it can recover a device whose firmware is bricked or whose link never comes up.
The companion refuses to write firmware built for the wrong model onto a device it recognizes, because a wrong-image flash leaves the screen dark. The same recovery is available from the command line, which is the path for a device so blank the app cannot identify it.