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Do you perform a "courtesy restart" after installing updates?

  • Yes

    Votes: 15 31.3%
  • No

    Votes: 28 58.3%
  • Sometimes

    Votes: 5 10.4%

  • Total voters
    48

ProQuiz

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 15, 2009
320
143
After your Mac finishes booting up after installing an update, do you perform another, manual, restart?
 
No. What is the rationale?
I've noticed that after my Mac boots into macOS after installing an update, it uses around 8-10 GB of RAM on idle (I have 18 GB of RAM). If I do another, manual, restart it drops to around 6 GB.
 
Yes, occasionally. Nothing tom do with memory utilisation but because it opens all the apps I had open previously, plus my login items, whereas I prefer a clean restart with just those apps I have set to open on login.

I often hard reboot the phone after an iOS upgrade too, but only at night after it's had a chance to do some indexing and settle. No real reason, just that it's an opportunity to flush any crap out of memory.
 
Yes, occasionally. Nothing tom do with memory utilisation but because it opens all the apps I had open previously, plus my login items, whereas I prefer a clean restart with just those apps I have set to open on login.

I often hard reboot the phone after an iOS upgrade too, but only at night after it's had a chance to do some indexing and settle. No real reason, just that it's an opportunity to flush any crap out of memory.
Same. I don't know why, but I don't like how it reopens everything after an update. Even if I close all my apps before clicking the 'Restart Now' button to finish the update, it still reopens everything. If it's going to restart, I want it to start fresh. Would be nice if the macOS updates respected the "Reopen windows when logging back in" setting that it uses for regular shutdowns/restarts.
 
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Same. I don't know why, but I don't like how it reopens everything after an update. Even if I close all my apps before clicking the 'Restart Now' button to start the update, it still reopens everything. If it's going to restart, I want it to start fresh. Would be nice if the macOS updates respected the "Reopen windows when logging back in" setting that it uses for regular shutdowns/restarts.
I close all my apps before clicking the "install" button for an update. After the restart, none of my apps are reopened automatically.
 
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I close all my apps before clicking the "install" button for an update. After the restart, none of my apps are reopened automatically.
I think we might be updating differently. Sounds like you're closing all your apps before you start the install. I'm referring to the 'Restart Now' that appears at the end of the upgrade/install process. I click 'Update Now' and continue to work while it's doing its stuff in the background. Later on, when it's done, I get a notification that it's ready to restart. I can restart later, restart now, or wait for the countdown. At that point, I close all my apps and click 'Restart Now', but they all reopen again after it restarts. It's as if it took a snapshot of what was open while the upgrade was running in the background instead of when I click the restart button.
 
I think we might be updating differently. Sounds like you're closing all your apps before you start the install. I'm referring to the 'Restart Now' that appears at the end of the upgrade/install process. I click 'Update Now' and continue to work while it's doing its stuff in the background. Later on, when it's done, I get a notification that it's ready to restart. I can restart later, restart now, or wait for the countdown. At that point, I close all my apps and click 'Restart Now', but they all reopen again after it restarts. It's as if it took a snapshot of what was open while the upgrade was running in the background instead of when I click the restart button.
Yeah. I close all my apps and stop using the computer before I start the install. When the "Restart Now" notification appears, I usually just let it countdown.
 
There's usually indexing done in the background after an update (which might explain your elevated memory usage), so I usually let it do its thing and restart ~24 hours later.
 
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I go all belt-and-suspenders+belt. Before an OS update I manually close all apps and force-kill the ones that hide (looking at you, Preview). I then do a reboot, open up Activity Monitor and wait until all the post-reboot nonsense gets done, then close all programs that start up as part of the login process (Mail and suchlike). Then I do the update. When that's done i wait again for all the post-reboot cruft to settle down and reboot again.

When I first moved from Windows+Linux to only Mac around 2004 I was doing this because of my Windows paranoia. After a few years I learned to relax and let the update process handle everything. About a decade ago I started running into silly little post-update issues, and then a catastrophic failed upgrade. I then stared the rinse-repeat process I just described. To quote somebody: "Yes, I know I am paranoid, but am I paranoid ENOUGH?" I'm sorry, but Mac computers no longer "just work."
 
After every update, I reboot into Recovery and run First Aid on the drive to check if the update process has not messed up Apple’s garbage APFS containers and volumes.
 
I'm having the installation complete overnight. A message comes up during the download that says the computer will be Restarted when the installation is completed. I was thinking that a Restart is always the result after an OS update/upgrade finishes. ???
 
When doing OS updates, the Mac will reboot (several times) by itself.
Why would another one be needed?
 
After an update each app will have to recompile all its Metal shaders, because of the updated graphic drivers, so there will be a lot MTLCompilerService around for a reboot or two, or until all all the usually used shaders will be compiled.
 
Huh. Never really thought to do it - always figured it got a fresh startup after the update.
 
Same. I don't know why, but I don't like how it reopens everything after an update. Even if I close all my apps before clicking the 'Restart Now' button to finish the update, it still reopens everything. If it's going to restart, I want it to start fresh. Would be nice if the macOS updates respected the "Reopen windows when logging back in" setting that it uses for regular shutdowns/restarts.
I log out and back in after an update, solely to clean up the "unwanted" apps.
 
I'm having the installation complete overnight. A message comes up during the download that says the computer will be Restarted when the installation is completed.
That didn't work. It did not install while I was sleeping. I had to click a Restart button. Then it wanted the User's password. If that happens in the middle of the night, it still needs user input. So why is this even an option that shows up in Software Update? Makes no sense.

When the installation did complete, I sat and watched. It seemed to Restart several times, as others reported above. I must have the chime disabled, but the progress bar disappeared and then reappeared, seemingly starting over.
 
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