After upgrading from Big Sur to Monterey, how to start fresh?

[Super Spartan]

When the final version is out and I do upgrade from Big Sur to Monterey, what is the easiest way to wipe my entire drive and have a fresh install of Monterey so start from scratch?

 

[TimManzana]

There will be a new reset option mentioned in a handful of threads already, just wait for final release.

 

[Mike Boreham]

There will be a new reset option mentioned in a handful of threads already, just wait for final release.

Yes after upgrading to Monterey the new "Delete All Data and Settings" setting is the easiest. Alternatives would be an erase reinstall from Recovery. Or you could go straight from Big Sur to fresh Monterey with a bootable Monterey installer made while still in Big Sur.

 

[Super Spartan]

There will be a new reset option mentioned in a handful of threads already, just wait for final release.

Thanks, I forgot that was added to Monterey! Make this so much easier!

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

Piggybacking on this... if I have a separate partition/volume container (for example, titled: "Movies" for my movies; separate from Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD-Data), would performing the Erase All Contents and Settings tool from System Preferences also erase the "Movies" partition/container?

 

[PatriotInvasion]

Question about the bootable installer approach to clean install Monterey. If you do this on an M1 iMac, will you lose the color specific wallpapers that are only available on the M1 iMac along with the custom color highlight settings in System Preferences? Or, will macOS somehow know the clean install is on a specific M1 iMac and restore those factory customizations upon installation?

 

[Mike Boreham]

Question about the bootable installer approach to clean install Monterey. If you do this on an M1 iMac, will you lose the color specific wallpapers that are only available on the M1 iMac along with the custom color highlight settings in System Preferences? Or, will macOS somehow know the clean install is on a specific M1 iMac and restore those factory customizations upon installation?

My belief is that (with occasional exceptions for very new models) the full installers downloaded from the catalog are not machine specific, so would contain any and all special features or data used by particular models.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Piggybacking on this... if I have a separate partition/volume container (for example, titled: "Movies" for my movies; separate from Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD-Data), would performing the Erase All Contents and Settings tool from System Preferences also erase the "Movies" partition/container?

Is your ATv app pointing at the movies on the separate container? If so they are in your ATv library and I think macOS would regard them as user data which would be deleted. If the movies are not in your ATv library they might not get deleted, but either way, if you dont want them deleted I would put them on an external and move them back later, though presumably they are backed up anyway.