If your furniture was all rearranged, you'd have to turn on the lights to see where you are going. If you know where your bed is, your head will hit the pillow without you even having to think about it. It's like coming home late at night, in the dark. It is much faster to go from installation to being productive again when all of your apps and files are right where you left them. You will already be signed in to all of your apps and you won't have to redownload pictures from iCloud. When you download and install macOS Big Sur without starting from scratch, all of your apps, settings, files, and documents will be in the exact same spot that they were before. That's why restoring from a backup might be the best choice for you.

Sound alerts, display options, keyboard settings – all of it will be reset to factory settings. Trying to figure out what happened to it could take a long time.Īll of the tweaks and adjustments you've made over the years to your computer will be gone. Similar to moving to a new house, there may have been a box in the garage that you never opened, but once you move, if you didn't take it with you, it's gone. Why a standard installation of macOS Big Sur is goodĪ clean install also means you lose everything.

If you have the patience and some free time, a clean installation of macOS Big Sur can be somewhat cathartic in its own right. Remember, when you do a clean install, you are starting from scratch. At first, you'll have to reenter passwords in Mail, sign back into iCloud and readjust your settings, redownload pictures in the Photos app (or redownload iCloud versions of them if you store the originals somewhere else), and a lot of other small, but time-consuming things. You'll need a level of patience and some extra time if you do a clean install of macOS Big Sur.

So, even though your apps may not be on your cleanly-installed Mac, you can usually get them back without much effort. Even third-party, non-Mac App Store apps usually have a method to confirm a previous purchase (like a license download code). Any apps you previously downloaded on Mac can be redownloaded right from the Mac App Store. Thanks to services like Dropbox and iCloud, you can easily track down files and documents that you've kept backed up in the cloud. VPN Deals: Lifetime license for $16, monthly plans at $1 & more

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