User System preference constantly reset

I have had a deep crash with the MacOS where even system UI thread was frozen, I did a hard reboot by pressing the power button on the touch bar for a few seconds, and then the reboot wasn't going any better which got stuck at some point on boot up then I have to do another hard reboot on a reboot, then another, until the third time of reboot I can get access to my MacOS.


Okay, ever since then, my MacOS acts pretty weird, where sometimes my system preference were reset after the machine has gone into sleep during weekends (by closing the lid of macbook). During the weekends it is locked in a locker so no one was able to change my settings.


  • Sometimes the language preference was being reset,

I have had my account set to English, which Japanese was the default. The system language preference was reset to the default after waking up from sleep.


This time, my language preference didn't reset, but

  • my clock showing on the status bar is changed to UTC instead of the region I selected

after waking up from sleep. Strangely enough, when I look into the system preference Date & Time, it shown perfectly at UTC+9, but just the display on status bar went off.


Then, I restart my macbook as usual, however this time, my system preference got reset again!

  • My Dark theme was reset to Light theme
  • My tracking speed was reset
  • My scroll orientation was reset


I have no idea how many other preferences are being reset until I notice them, but at least my keyboard input preference was not reset, which means not all of my user preferences were reset, but some preserved (or survived I should say).


So WHAT is going on here? Thank you!


I am using the latest MacOS 10.14.5 by the way.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 16, 2019 7:16 PM

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Jun 17, 2019 12:13 PM in response to samson4c

Hi samson4c,


​Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities. I understand you're finding that some of your preferences reset after waking your Mac from sleep.


You mentioned this started after you had to force the Mac to shut down due to unresponsiveness. Based on this, I recommend starting by repairing your startup disk in recovery mode. Check out the steps here: Repair a disk using Disk Utility on Mac


To isolate the issue, you might also try seeing if you can replicate the behaviors in both safe mode and a temporary administrator account. This will tell you if there may be certain software causes, and if the issue is system-wide or user account-specific:


Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac


How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac


Feel free to post back here with the results of testing! Cheers.

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User System preference constantly reset

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