Unable to start from recovery partition on new Macs

I’m unable to access recovery mode (⌘+R at startup) on newer Macs. It goes straight to setup mode, showing the window to select the language.

I was able to access recovery mode only by going through the setup first (selecting a language, logging into Wi-Fi, creating a user account, etc), starting up macOS and then restarting. Only after all this did ⌘+R work as intended.

This may have to do with the new T2 chip and secure boot feature.

This is a bit of a hassle when you have to configure a lot of Macs. It takes a lot of time.

Did anyone else encounter this issue? Is there any recommended workaround for this?

Yeah…I just encountered that the other day also