Read and download Apple Laptops MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2012) Quick Start Manual online. Download free Apple user manuals, owners manuals, instructions, warranties and installation guides, etc. MacBook Air 5,2 (13-inch, Mid 2012) is the subnotebook, engineered, designed and manufactured by Apple, powered by Ivy Bridge processors family. It is the ultra-thin machined aluminum case with a full-size backlit keyboard, 13.3 inch widescreen TFT LED backlit active-matrix display and solid-state drive.

1. Macbook Air Mid 2012 Manual Transmission

Let’s get started

When you start your MacBook Air for the first time, Setup Assistant will help

you get going. Just follow a few simple steps to quickly connect to your Wi-Fi

network, transfer your stuff from another Mac or a PC, and create a user

account for your Mac.

You’ll also be able to log in with your Apple ID. This will allow you to shop

the App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple Online Store. It will let you keep in

touch using Messages and FaceTime. And it will let you access iCloud, which

is automatically set up on your Mac in apps like Mail, Contacts, and Calendar.

If you don’t have an Apple ID, you can create one in Setup Assistant.

Multi-Touch gestures

You can do a lot of things on your MacBook Air using simple gestures

on the trackpad. Here are some of the most popular ones.

Get to know your desktop

The desktop is where you can find everything and do anything on your Mac.

The Dock at the bottom of the screen is a handy place to keep the apps you

use most. It’s also where you can open System Preferences, which lets you

customize your desktop and other settings on your Mac. Click the Finder

icon to quickly get to all your files and folders.

The menu bar at the top has lots of useful information about your Mac.

To check the status of your wireless Internet connection, click the Wi-Fi icon.

Your Mac automatically connects to the network you chose during setup.

Hello.

Multi-Touch
trackpad

MagSafe 2 power
connector

Power
adapter

AC power
cord

Power
button

Click
Press down anywhere on the trackpad
to click. Or, with Tap to Click enabled,
simply tap the surface.

Secondary click (right click)
Click with two fingers to open shortcut
menus. Or, with Tap to Click enabled, tap
two fingers anywhere.

Swipe to navigate
Swipe with two fingers to flip through
web pages, documents, and more.

Double click
Press down two times anywhere on the
trackpad. Or, with Tap to Click enabled,
double-tap the surface.

Two-finger scroll
Brush two fingers along the trackpad
to scroll in any direction—up, down,
or sideways.

Smart zoom
Double-tap the trackpad with two
fingers to quickly magnify a web page.

Pinch to zoom
Zoom in and out of photos and web
pages more precisely by pinching your
thumb and finger.

Switch between full-screen apps
Swipe with three fingers to move
from one full-screen app to another.

View Launchpad
Pinch with four fingers to view
all your apps in Launchpad.

Rotate
Turn your thumb and finger clockwise
or counterclockwise to rotate an image.

View Mission Control
Swipe up with three fingers to see
every open window on your Mac.

Learn more
Choose System Preferences from the
Apple menu and click Trackpad to learn
more about gestures.

iCloud

iCloud stores your music, photos, documents, calendars, and more. And

it wirelessly pushes them to your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and even

your PC. All without docking or syncing. So when you buy a song on one

device, it’s instantly available on all your other devices. When you adjust

your calendar, all your devices stay up to date. And with Photo Stream,

your latest photos appear everywhere you want to see them, automatically.

To customize your iCloud settings, open the Apple menu, select System

Preferences, and click iCloud. Then sign in with your Apple ID and choose

the iCloud features you want to use.

An important note

Please read this document and the safety information in the Important

Product Information Guide carefully before you first use your computer.

Learn more

You can find more information, watch demos, and learn even more about

MacBook Air features at

www.apple.com/macbookair

.

Help

You can often find answers to your questions, as well as instructions

and troubleshooting information, in Help Center. Click the Finder icon,

click Help in the menu bar, and choose Help Center.

OS X Utilities

If you have a problem with your Mac, OS X Utilities can help you repair

your computer’s flash storage, restore your software and data from a

Time Machine backup, or erase your flash storage and reinstall OS X

and Apple applications. You can also use Safari to get online help. If your

Mac detects a problem, it opens OS X Utilities automatically. Or you

can open it manually by restarting your computer while holding down

the Command and R keys.

Support

Your MacBook Air comes with 90 days of technical support and one year

of hardware repair warranty coverage at an Apple Retail Store or an Apple

Authorized Service Provider. Visit

www.apple.com/support/macbookair

for MacBook Air technical support. Or call

1-800-275-2273

. In Canada,

call

1-800-263-3394

.

Not all features are available in all areas.
TM and © 2012 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Designed by Apple in California. Printed in XXXX.

034-6587-A

AC plug

Help
menu

Menu bar

Finder

Dock

System
Preferences

Quick Start Guide

Let’s get moving

It’s easy to move files like documents, email, photos, music, and movies

to your new Mac from another Mac or a PC. The first time you start your

new Mac, it will walk you through the process step by step. All you have

to do is follow the onscreen instructions.

Welcome to your new MacBook Air. We’d like to show you around.

USB 3

FaceTime HD camera

SD

USB 3

MagSafe 2

Thunderbolt

Wi-Fi
status

Headphone

If you count yourself among the millions of MacBook Air fans across the world, you’re tempted to purchase new version of the MacBook Air that comes with the Retina display, faster processor, and improved keyboard that might make your old MacBook Air seem like a bit of a relic. However, before you give up on your older Air and before shelling out the cash for a replacement, first consider breathing new life into your current machine!

By backing up your MacBook Air with Time Machine and performing a factory reset of your MacBook Air, your machine will feel like you just unboxed it for the first time.

A factory reset could be helpful if your laptop has been running slow, especially if you’ve installed a ton of updates and apps, which can bog your machine down over time.

And with macOS Mojave available, it’s the perfect time to get your computer back up-to-date and runnning well. Mojave is chock full of new enhancements and system changes that will keep your Air running well for years to come. However, keep in mind that macOS Mojave is only compatible with MacBook Airs manufactured after mid 2012.

If you’ve never factory reset your MacBook Air before, I’m here to tell you that it’s a fairly simple process that makes it easy to wipe your data off the machine and fix any problems, bugs, or slow down you may be experiencing on your laptop, making the computer feel just as fast as the day you brought it home from the Apple Store. That said, it’s critical you back up your data before starting this process.

Here’s how to backup and then factory restore your MacBook Air.

Backing Up Your Data with Time Machine

Apple makes it really easy to backup your data on your MacBook Air, even if most people don’t really have a backup all ready to go. If that sounds like you, no worries—so long as you have access to your MacBook Air, you’ll be able to use Time Machine and an external hard drive to create a backup of your files, documents, and other important information.

If you don’t have a dedicated external hard drive, it’s a great time to pick one up. Apple offers the AirPort Time Capsule, which Apple build specifically for time machine backups.

Alternatively, there are plenty of 1 and 2 terabyte drives on Amazon under $100, and if you’re looking for a recommendation, check out the Western Digital MyPassport drive or the Seagate Backup Plus drive, both of which are designed to work with macOS directly out of the box.

Once you have your drive plugged into your computer and you’re ready to go, open up the Time Machine application on your Mac.

This is accessible either through Launchpad (the Mac application launcher) or by tapping on the Apple menu icon, selecting System Preferences, and then clicking on the Time Machine option.

This will display some general information about Time Machine, including when and what data it backs up. If you don’t plan on keeping your hard drive connected at all times to your MacBook Air, you can also do a one-time backup using Time Machine.

Use your mouse to click on “Select Backup Disk,” and select your hard drive from the list of devices connected to your computer. Tap on “Use Disk,” and your hard drive will be saved as a Time Machine backup drive.

Once your Time Machine has been set, macOS will do backups every twenty-four hours to ensure that you always have an up-to-date back up available in case you ever need to restore your Macbook Air. Of course, since we’re planning on completely resetting the laptop, you can also choose to force a backup at any time by heading into the Time Machine menu and tapping “Back Up Now.”

You can choose what Time Machine backs up by hitting the Options menu at the bottom of Time Machine inside System Preferences. Depending on the amount of files on your device, your first backup might take a while. If you’re looking to do a fresh install of macOS, without transferring over every application installed on your computer, head into your options menu to control what is and isn’t backed up.

Once you’ve finished your backup, make sure to safely eject your drive from your MacBook Air before unplugging the drive.

Factory Resetting Your MacBook Air

Once you’ve backed up your user data to either Time Machine or the backup application of your choice, it’s time to factory reset your Macbook Air. This process can help you solve all sorts of bugs and problems with your Macbook, including issues with slowdowns, freezing applications, and it a reset will generally increase the speed of your machine back to what it was when you first got your machine in its original state. A factory reset’s also a necessary process if you’re looking to sell your MacBook Air, in order to remove any and all user data left on the computer.

MacOS has a built-in recovery disk utility to help you erase and reinstall the operating system, which you can redownload from inside the boot display on your Mac.

Alternatively, you can also choose to download macOS Mojave from the Mac App Store on your device, creating a bootable USB drive from the download file. You can find instructions for that here. But For now, we’ll be looking at how to reset your MacBook Air from the boot screen on your device. Please note that this does require an active internet connection.

To begin, start by hitting the Apple icon in the top-left corner of your MacBook’s display. Choose “Restart” from the drop-down menu and be ready to press some keys on your keyboard.

When the Apple logo reappears on your MacBook Air’s display, press and hold down Command and R on your keyboard. Don’t let go of these keys until you see the macOS Utilities window appear on your display.

Once this window appears, you can release the Command and R keys on your keyboard. Here, you’ll see several different options for selection, as shown above. If you want to reinstall macOS over your current file system, click “Reinstall macOS.”

To factory reset your device, however, click “Disk Utility” at the bottom of the list.

Once Disk Utility has opened on your display, you’ll see a list of your computer’s installed disks on the left side of the Disk Utility panel.

You’ll want to locate your MacBook Air’s startup disk. For most users, the startup disk is the main and only disk listed.

Select your startup disk from the list, then click the “Erase” button inside Disk Utility. Select the “Format” pop-up window, choose Mac OS Extended, give your reformatted disk a name, then confirm your erasure.

You’ll now see a display begin to erase your MacBook Air’s drive and data. When this process is complete, your disk is successfully wiped—but you aren’t done yet.

Your computer no longer has an installed operating system on it, meaning no matter whether you’re selling your laptop or simply reformatting the drive to improve the speed or performance of your computer, you’ll still have to reinstall your operating system.

Reinstalling macOS On Your MacBook Air

So, with your newly-blank MacBook Air, start by quitting out of Disk Utility by selecting “Disk Utility,” then “Quit.”

This will return you back to the macOS Utilities display we used earlier. This time, select “Reinstall macOS” from this list.

Typically, this will keep your current files and other data and simply reinstall the operating system on top of the program. But since your files, apps, and other user data has already been deleted from your system, this option will simply install a new version of macOS on your hard drive.

This will open the macOS Installer, which walks you through reinstalling the newest version of macOS directly onto your MacBook Air.

The installer will ask you to choose the disk you’d like to install your system on (again, most MacBook Airs have only one storage drive built into their systems, unless you’ve personally added another, so select the default drive).

When you tap Install, you may be asked to allow some permissions, after which your computer will begin to download macOS. This download will take some time, especially if you’re on a slower internet connection, so be patient and let your computer do its thing. It’s not a terrible idea to step away for a few hours, lest you simply stand over your MacBook Air watching the download bar slowly creep up every few minutes.

When macOS has finished downloading, you may need to start the installation manually by accepting the install on your computer. Once the laptop has finished installing your operating system, it should automatically restart and boot into the macOS Welcome screen, prompting you to start a new account on the system and to set up your system.

If you’re planning on selling your laptop, you can more or less power off the device here—your MacBook Air has been returned to its factory state, and is safe to be shipped off without having to worry about your data being in danger.

Restoring a Time Machine Backup

When you’ve finished setting up your reformatted Mac, you may want to restore the files you saved onto your external hard drive using a Time Machine backup. Time Machine makes it easy to restore from any of the saved backups on your device, and this includes performing this action on newly-formatted computers. Here’s how to do it.

Start by opening up Time Machine, either from your dock or, if you’ve removed the shortcut from your dock, by clicking the Apple icon in the menu bar on the top of your display, selecting “System Preferences,” and selecting “Time Machine.”

With your external hard drive plugged into your MacBook Air, you can use Time Machine to browse through your files to find what you want to restore. The timeline on the right side of your MacBook’s display will show the date and time of each backup, allowing you to slide through the list and find the correct or most recent backup to restore from.

As you select the file or files, you can hit the restore button to restore them back to your device. To preview a file, select a specific file and tap on the spacebar key on your keyboard.

Alternatively, if you want to restore everything from your Time Machine backup, you can use the same macOS recovery display we used earlier in this guide to format and reinstall macOS.

Simply hit “Restart” on your device in the Apple logo, wait for your machine to power back on, and hold Command and R on your keyboard when the Apple icon appears on your display.

When you’re back in the macOS Utilities display, select “Restore from Disk Utility,” and follow the instructions on the screen to restore your backed-up apps and files to your computer.

***

Restoring your MacBook Air to its former glory is surprisingly easy when you know how to properly use macOS’s recovery mode and Utilities menu.

While this isn’t something you’ll want to do regularly, it is rather surprising how a simple reinstall can make your aging Mac feel brand new again. Apple’s MacBook Air is one of those few legendary laptops that will be remembered for its affordability, premium design, all-day battery, and the ubiquity of the machine at colleges, coffee shops, and everything in between.

If you’re still rocking an Air, keeping it clean and clear every couple years will make your laptop run with improved speed and performance.

If you found this article useful, you might find other TechJunkie articles about macOS useful as well, including, How To Flush the DNS in Mac Mojave.

Do you have any tips or tricks for backing up and resetting a Macbook Air back to the factory default settings? If so, please leave us a comment below!

Macbook Air Mid 2012 Manual Transmission

Just make sure you backup your files before you reinstall the operating system!