Thanks for the responses. Good to know others are not having the same issues and this also helps isolate the issue with my computer. Not sure I want to do a full reinstall for a few buggy issues as annoying as they are.
But if I choose to do a reinstall how do I go about doing that and does it wipe away my prefs and settings?
I guarantee you that those few buggy issues will prove to be not merely annoying but can lead to even more bugs and even catastrophe. macOS consists of thousands of files that are constantly running, being read, saved, rewritten, etc., so much so that it’s practically impossible to guarantee that none of them will be saved or written over perfectly 100% of the time. Over time, errors, mostly impossible to detect, will start to accumulate until they start to show up as part of those “issues” you are experiencing. Whenever unexpected quits/crashes happen, I immediately send the crash report to Apple (if you are registered as a Developer or Public beta tester), and if the crash persists, or feels major enough, I will usually opt to reinstall macOS. If you are able to download a copy of your present system’s installer file, you should always keep a copy of it for situations such as this. If the download is not yet available, as macOS 15.4.1 (24E263) is presently, the only recourse is to reboot into Recovery and reinstall from there.
I would not allow these “issues” to persist because they can only start to get worse until you get to a place when you can’t even start your Mac in order to perform any kind of repair. In my experience, and without new updates available, I probably do a macOS reinstall about once a month, not out of experiencing crashes or anything of the sort, but simply for routine maintenance. Of course, backing up is always vital. I have three Time Machine drives regularly backing up every hour, and in addition, regular clones of all my data using Carbon Copy Cloner. I used to be an Apple Authorized AppleCare tech and the great majority of the work involved having to reinstall data, assuming there was no hardware problem, and the majority of the time, no sufficient backup was available and the owner would be left with a “brand new” macOS system with no backup to retrieve from. Sad…
And with this method, i.e. migration, all your “prefs and settings” will be restored completely. Hence, the name “Recovery.”
If you were to make it a routine—reinstalling macOS regularly, I’m sure you will begin to enjoy the experience—not only from learning new tricks, but also from the peace of mind it will bring. If you’re not quite ready to perform it, you should at least get the hang of booting into Recovery, familiarizing yourself with the various utilities (Disk Utility, Safari in Recovery, macOS reinstall, etc.) before actually performing it. Don’t forget Time Machine backups beforehand, and a backup copy of your present system to migrate your data from.
