Reinstall OS without data loss

[mattspace]

OK, this should be something I know, but Apple's documentation is now so bad it simple doesn't address the question;

If I want to reinstall macOS (Ventura) and I DON'T want to use the recovery partition to do it, can I just run the Mac App Store downloaded installer over my existing OS install without it wiping my existing data / user accounts / 3rd party drivers / extensions etc?

Does anyone know where this is documented?

 

[Nermal]

The system volume is read-only, and assuming that the system currently boots (i.e. the volume isn't corrupted) then all you'll do is replace the current system volume with an identical one (i.e. you'll effectively be doing nothing).

What are you trying to accomplish?

 

[mattspace]

The system volume is read-only, and assuming that the system currently boots (i.e. the volume isn't corrupted) then all you'll do is replace the current system volume with an identical one (i.e. you'll effectively be doing nothing).

What are you trying to accomplish?

In trying to troubleshoot a user issue (desktop wallpaper images and custom colours being lost on reboot), I ran a system cache clean with tinkertool system (after user caches and restoring user permissions didn't fix it), thinking the problem might have been a corrupted path (or permissions on ~/Pictures) at boot not finding the route to my user directory at the correct time, and so defaulting to Ventura's wallpaper.

Now, that problem with desktop pictures seems to have been resolved by moving the desktop pictures to an internal SATA SSD rather than my PCI NVME boot drive, BUT now the system is unstable - kernel panics at odd times, like this morning a few minutes after wake from sleep, not doing anything in particular. Previously this machine was uptime in months (rebooting only when a security update required it).

Something that did happen after clearing those caches was a notification that appeared breifly after rebooting that mentioned something along the lines of the system volume checksum being broken / not matching, and advising to reinstall macOS. Instability has followed since then. but that notification has never returned.

So on the thought that perhaps doing a restore from the running boot drive might be suspect if that drive is suspect, I figured running the reinstall from a fresh download might eliminate that as a worry.