Luke Filipowicz, Lory Gil, iMore:
Downloading and installing a new OS gives you the opportunity to do some major house cleaning if you so desire. If you feel like you’d like a fresh start with macOS High Sierra, you can always opt to do a clean install: Just follow the steps below, even if you’ve already installed macOS High Sierra.
A clean install does give you a chance to shake out the leftover cruft from legacy installs. Me, I always keep several copies of backups, untouched, so I can go back and retrieve old apps/data I was sure I’d never need again.
Good post.
I always do a clean install on my main machines. The experts on discussions.apple.com opine that this is largely unnecessary, but I do it nonetheless.
I dreaded clean installs a lot less when I had fewer machine-specific software/services accounts that required deauthorization before making the jump.
Caleb, do you then restore from a Time Machine backup or just start fresh and install apps as needed? I feel like there’s a ton of bloat on my system and want to do a clean install but the idea of re-downloading/installing all my apps, mail, passwords, etc is a bit daunting.
Reinstall everything from scratch. Sync/download email & iCloud data. Manually reset all my preferences. Leave out what is no longer relevant. It usually takes me a week to fully get back to where I was pre-upgrade.