How to restore macOS settings and startup products on a new Mac

Apple has enhanced macOS’s improve process tremendously over the a long time. With current releases, it’s uncommon some thing goes pear-formed and stops an up grade from completing. Nevertheless, you can occasionally wind up in an in-amongst condition, as a person reader identified. Your accounts migrated with all their facts, but on each and every restart, macOS loses modifications to startup merchandise, Method Preferences options, and even app registrations. The startup volume passes all exams with traveling hues: safe mode, Initial Help in Disk Utility, reinstalling the working method from macOS Recovery, and the like.

At this stage, you have only two possibilities:

• Use Migration Assistant to primarily “reinstall” your principal user or any impacted macOS people.
• Erase the generate and conduct a refreshing migration omitting community and other configurations.
• Erase, reinstall macOS, generate a new consumer, migrate applications, and manually copy around your person files.

In all scenarios, you do not modify any of your files or make any deletions. The trouble seems to be in how macOS tracks what it must be consulting at startup.

Reinstall your consumer by using Migration Assistant

You usually use Migration Assistant to go about a prior startup volume to a new Mac or a related transfer. However, Migration Assistant lets you set up particular customers from a backup quantity. Warning: The pursuing steps log you out of your account to conduct the migration.

1. Build a contemporary Time Device backup if 1 wasn’t established considering the fact that the last time you built any alterations to the account’s files. (You can also use a cloning application, like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!)
2. Launch Programs > Utilities > Migration Assistant.
3. Click Carry on and authenticate. This logs you out of your existing account into Migration Assistant method.
4. Choose your Time Equipment drive or other backup and simply click Continue.
5. Decide on the particular backup if there are multiples, and click Go on.
6. From the “Select the information and facts to transfer” window, test the account or accounts with which you are owning troubles and simply click Carry on. (Take note: You require at the very least as significantly no cost house on your startup quantity as revealed following to each individual account.)
7. You’re prompted to rename the accounts, as they would otherwise overlap with present accounts on this Mac.
8. Adhere to prompts to full the restoration.
9. When concluded, log in to the “new” edition of your faulty account.

Test producing changes that formerly failed. If they do the job now, you can delete the more mature account:

1. In Process Choices > Users & Teams, simply click the lock icon and authenticate yourself.
2. Choose the older consumer account and click on the minus indicator at the base of the accounts record.
3. Pick out “Delete the residence folder” and click on Delete User. Verify deletion. (Given that you have a backup of this account and have a copy on your push, you really should have plenty of backups. You can also opt for “Save the dwelling folder in a disk graphic,” but need that considerably storage place to make that copy.)

If the earlier mentioned didn’t get you again to your prior operating point out, check out the following two alternatives.

Carry out a complete reinstall and restore

You can consider a lot more drastic actions at this point if the earlier mentioned did not operate:

1. Following making sure you have two distinct copies of your documents backed up and safe, restart your Mac into macOS Restoration.
2. Choose Disk Utility and click on Continue.
3. Decide on your startup push and erase it, then partition it, as explained in this post.
4. Quit Disk Utility, choose Reinstall macOS, simply click Continue, and observe the prompts.
5. Restart into macOS and select your backed-up quantity to use with Migration Assistant. Stick to the prompts, but do not test Program & Community–despite the innocent-sounding identify, unchecking it has been the resolution to some knotty migrations I have experienced in the earlier.

When finish, does your account now preserve changes? If so, prevent right here and make a refreshing backup.

If not, there’s a person far more issue to try out.

Migrate to a new account manually

Simply because you reinstalled macOS in the past action and migrated all your programs from the backup, you can steer clear of the two of those operations.

Rather, you’re heading to produce a contemporary account and go your information there. Go to Program Choices > Users & Teams and develop a new account: simply click the + indicator, name the account, and give it administrative privileges.

Mainly because Apple does not enable you normally copy right from account to account devoid of messing close to with permissions, you can use the Buyers > Shared folder as an intermediate move.

Initial, whilst logged in to your damaged user account, copy everything you have to have to the Shared folder. Most of your individual information likely are living in Paperwork and Photographs: hold down the Choice crucial and drag those people into the Shared folder. Do the identical for other information. (You can hold down Command rather of Option to shift people folders to Shared if you absence more than enough storage and can depend on a backup of your major user account if you require to vacation resort to it.)

Upcoming, log out of this faulty account and into the new just one you made:

• Operate by setup steps, this kind of as logging into iCloud and other Apple ID accounts.
• Command-drag files from the Shared folder into the new account’s area.
• Start the applications you need to use and reconnect libraries and re-enter registrations.

It may possibly be tricky or time-consuming to set up some application, especially these that have elaborate permissions. Use the application developer’s Web website to discover if the business offers guidelines on finding the configurations files—often deep in ~/Library/ in numerous subfolders like Application Aid and Choices. Also change to a search motor for help from other folks who have long gone by the very same restoration.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by G3 Box News reader Michael.

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