Get Ready For Catalina

A new macOS is coming. time to tidy up before the move

- Adam Banks

This year’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) was one of the most feature-packed for years, and much of the good news was for Mac users, with lots of improvements and additions – both visible and under the hood – coming to macOS Catalina.

There’s a good chance that your Mac can benefit: apart from the old-school silver Mac Pro tower (2010-2012), which finally drops off the compatibility list, every Mac that could run macOS Mojave can be upgraded to Catalina when it appears in the autumn. As usual, it’s free.

Apple’s teams work hard to make updating your Mac’s operating system as simple as possible. All you’ll need to do is find the new version on the Mac App Store, download it and click Install. You can expect the process to complete in an hour or less without affecting the apps and files on your Mac. It’s not designed to be something that causes any disruption.

Even so, there are two good reasons to pause and take stock of your system before you make the move. One is that, although it’s fairly rare with macOS upgrades, things can occasionally go wrong, whether because of obscure bugs, unforeseen combinations of circumstances, or random events like a power cut or hard drive failure at a crucial moment. You should always have your Mac and any external storage backed up, using macOS’ Time Machine or an alternative, but if you’ve been putting it off, it’s particularly wise to get it done before any major operations like a new OS.

It’s also simply a good opportunity to have a tidy up. That way, you really will feel like you’ve got a new Mac, fresh and ready for everything the next year can throw at it. Let’s see how to do just that.

Clean up, back up

Lose files you don’t need and safeguard the ones you do