Erase MacBook hard drive without the use of the mouse

Solution 1:

You can use a Keyboard combination to erase your Macbook with VoiceOver's accessibility feature.

1. First, reboot your computer and be in Recovery mode with the combination of ⌘+R.

2. At the recovery welcome screen, press ⌘+F5 keys (or ⌘+fn+F5, if you're on an Apple laptop) to enable VoiceOver's accessibility features.

3. On the macOS Utilities selection screen, use the arrow keys to highlight Disk Utility, press the Tab button to highlight the Continue button and press ⌃+⌥+Space as instructed by the voice-over display screen.

4. Use ⇥ (tab) if needed to be on your Macintosh HD-Data. Once you follow the voice control option, you can be on Erase option, and press ⌃+⌥+Space

5. Voila !! it is done without any mouse too.

Solution 2:

This can be done from macOS Recovery without the use of a mouse and primarily using just the arrow, tab and space keys. The enter key may need to be used on some objects, depending on the selection(s) made:

1. Boot to macOS Recovery by holding down ⌘R when starting the Mac.
2. At the macOS Utilities window, press the down-arrow key four times. This highlights Disk Utility because the table containing it already has focus when booted to macOS Recovery.
3. Press the tab key once to highlight the Continue button.
4. Press the space key to actuate the highlighted Continue button, which starts Disk Utility.

In Disk Utility:

1. Use the up-arrow key to highlight the e.g. Macintosh HD, or whichever volume you want to erase.
2. Use the tab key multiple times until the Erase button on the Toolbar is highlighted.
3. Press the space key to actuate the highlighted Erase button.
4. On the ensuing sheet, e.g. Erase Macintosh HD, use the previously mentioned keystroke methods to navigate, select and actuate the buttons as wanted. You can also actuate the Format: pop-up menu, once selected with the tab key, with the up-arrow or down-arrow keys and press the enter key after making the selection.

_{Note: These steps were tested from macOS Recovery on a system running macOS Catalina and works as described without the use of VoiceOver.}