Naming of Home Folder

When you receive your new iMac, it will ask if you want to transfer information from another Mac or its Time Machine backup (which one you choose makes no difference). That's the time to do it, and it will preclude the naming conflict that occurs if you defer that decision until after its initial setup. The result will be a brand new Mac that will resemble the one it replaced as closely as possible — the same User Accounts with the same login names, same passwords, same preferences, same printers, and (to the extent older programs continue to work on a newer macOS version) the same programs with the same licensing information.

That's the way I've done things since the 1990s all the way through today.

Few things are more annoying than a user interface that disregards a selected preference without the courtesy of telling you the reason.

You can try clearing Safari's cache with Empty Caches in its Develop menu. You might also try clearing website data but I surmise neither one will fix that particular problem.

Try those options first, but after that you might consider deleting certain Safari-related files as apple2316 described in Safari crashes on mac for only one user - Apple Community.

In that Discussion,

apple2316 wrote:

Then, using the method of trial and error, I started to delete ~Library Safari files. The last group of folders/files that I deleted were Cookies, Cache, Safari and, in the folder Saved Application State, the file com.apple.Safari.savedState. After I restarted the Mac, Safari opened correctly. So, the problem was in one of these files.

I hesitate to go there only because asking users to do things like that sometimes causes confusion and / or concern. However, if you exhaust all other efforts that's what I recommend. It was required in a related situation in which Safari's page rendering became messed up (page text elements became too big, etc). Nothing else worked.

John Galt wrote:

The likelihood of finding a "smoking gun" is remote though, if for no other reason that so much of what used to be under local control is now delegated to the maddeningly opaque and seemingly capricious iCloud.

Case in point

By the way there is at least one similar complaint:

I can't change my preferences in the Downloads section of Safari Website preferences. - Apple Community

I've gone to Safari Preferences and Websites to change the preferences in the Downloads section, but every time I try to change it from 'ask' to 'allow' it immediately changes it back to 'ask' and doesn't stop the pop-ups.

Subscribe to that Discussion in hopes someone comes up with something better than I can.

Live dangerously 😆

Sort that list by Date Modified and you will easily identify the file that gets modified when changing that preference. One clearly stands out to me: PerSitePreferences.db-wal

I'd quit Safari, drag that one onto the Desktop, launch Safari again and see if anything gets fixed. If not, you can revert the change by dragging that file back, overwriting the newly created one.

Sure! Conflict Catcher was a great tool.

Of course we needed great tools back then. Today things are just supposed to work, and for the most part they do. But when they don't, troubleshooting is not as simple as it once was. Your technique is a good one and no, you're not risking anything remotely disastrous. I was going to suggest it. You just have to do things methodically, with patience, and with a backup / recovery plan already in place.

The likelihood of finding a "smoking gun" is remote though, if for no other reason that so much of what used to be under local control is now delegated to the maddeningly opaque and seemingly capricious iCloud. If Safari is one of the many iCloud services you are using, it can definitely be a contributing factor.

You might also consider creating a new, temporary User Account to determine if it exhibits the same behavior. That might implicate a macOS / Safari problem that only Apple can fix, or it might justify additional troubleshooting "local" to your Mac. If iCloud syncing could be a factor, you could try using a different iCloud Account for that temporary User Account.

By the way I tried and failed to replicate what you're seeing. If I make a change to Website Preferences they stick, and as you already know that's what should be happening.

Room101A wrote:

Remember Conflict Catcher?

I had forgotten that CC was developed by Casady & Greene who wrote a couple of really unique and imaginative games. I wasted countless hours playing them on my SE/30.

Great! Thanks for the update.