Ask HN: Why does macOS assume apps can reliably maintain settings files?
2 amichail 5 8/27/2025, 6:04:08 PM
I don’t trust apps to keep settings intact over long periods through multiple updates.
I think macOS should offer a feature to reset to a fresh install while preserving the home directory name and moving its contents to an "old" subdirectory.
Would you use such a feature occasionally (e.g., yearly)?
Create a new user and delete the old one. This functionality already exists and doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Likewise Apple shouldn’t be trying to help fix these issues in any sort of way as it will make troubleshooting issues with macOS and app updates harder to diagnose.
There’s always going to be a possibility of an issue but if you’re blindly upgrading your OS without checking for support on your third party apps it’s always going to be a problem but you can run into this with any OS…
An OS should never assume that apps are written perfectly.