Best way to reinstall Sequoia 15.5?

[Jonzjob]

I am sick of a lot of peculiar happenings on my iMac M1 24 and have decided to do a clean reinstall of Sequoia, after doing a complete backup of course. Most of my files and photos are on external disks so that should save a lot of time in the backups for the reinstall.

So, is there a nice simple way for me to do this please? I have just done a Time Machine backup of the system disk and I will disconnect all of the external disks during the reinstall.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...decided to do a clean reinstall of Sequoia,...

So, is there a nice simple way for me to do this please?

You can reset your entire installation of the Macintosh OS by booting into Recovery and reinstalling a fresh copy of the OS. This will leave all of your apps and docs untouched.

How to start up from macOS Recovery - Apple Support​

macOS Recovery is your computer’s built-in recovery system, with utilities to reinstall macOS, repair or erase your startup disk, restore from a Time Machine backup, and more. Follow the steps for your type of Mac.

support.apple.com

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support​

You can use macOS Recovery, your computer's built-in recovery system, to reinstall the Mac operating system. Reinstalling macOS doesn't remove your personal data.

support.apple.com

 

[ferrarr]

In Sequoia you don't even need to startup in Recovery

Go into Settings -> General -> Transfer or Reset. Once there select Erase all Content and Settings.

 

[MacInWin]

Bob's suggestion is the easiest way to acccomplish it. No need for a "reinstall" any more. Every boot the system checks the core system is still in agreement with what Apple installs and if not, fixes it. However, something you have installed or done may make it misbehave after that, so be careful in the restoration process not to restore the cause of your issues.

One thing to make sure is the way YOU want it is the Optimization of storage. I recommend that you NOT use Optimization and that you make that change before you restore your stuff. Some of your symptoms sound like at some point Optimization was ON, then maybe OFF, and that in the process the things you have described got mucked up.