dock – Welcome display and menubar settings all the time revert on restart

MacBook Professional 14″ M4Pro 2025 Tahoe 26.4.1

1. The Dock reverts to default, that means apps/icons I’ve eliminated are again and objects I’ve added by way of “add to dock” are gone

That is mounted. I first killed the dock course of in exercise monitor per @Linc Davis and noticed that the dock reverted when it reappeared. I mounted this by deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist and recreating my desired settings. Upon restart my settings persevered correctly.

2. The menubar and management heart objects revert, identical as above. This consists of system objects like Bluetooth, which I add to the principle menubar however disappears on restart.

I attempted following the identical course of as for the dock however I am not getting the identical end result. I deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.controlcenter.plist, redid my adjustments, and killed the management heart course of. The adjustments persevered however did not persist on restart.

3. the “Welcome to Tahoe” routine (here is Apple AI! here is Liquid Glass! Would you want a tour?!”) occurs on each restart.

I checked for the presence of /.non-public/var/db/.AppleSetupDone and it is there. I seen that the “welcome” stuff runs after I log in, so I subsequent went to the terminal and ran

plutil -p ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant.plist

to see the important thing/worth pairs. They’re pasted beneath. I do not see something apparent to vary. If no one weighs in on this, I’ll merely delete that file, reboot, undergo the screens, and reboot once more to see.

What I’ve tried, with a restart after every:

1. killall Dock

2. take away contents of ~Library/Caches

3. take away ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

4. take away ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

5. toggled dock and menubar present/conceal/visibility settings

Assist? Cheers!

Edit: FYI, I haven’t got any third-party finder utils and I did a clear set up after I received this machine final 12 months (vs migrating my residence folder and so on from my outdated one).

~ plutil -p ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant.plist
{
  "DidSeeAccessibility" => true
  "DidSeeActivationLock" => false
  "DidSeeAppearanceSetup" => true
  "DidSeeApplePaySetup" => true
  "DidSeeAppStore" => false
  "DidSeeCloudSetup" => true
  "DidSeeiCloudLoginForStorageServices" => true
  "DidSeeLockdownMode" => false
  "DidSeePrivacy" => true
  "DidSeeScreenTime" => true
  "DidSeeSiriSetup" => true
  "DidSeeSyncSetup" => true
  "DidSeeSyncSetup2" => true
  "DidSeeTermsOfAddress" => false
  "DidSeeTouchIDSetup" => true
  "FDECSLVUUIDs" => [
    0 => "5640FAB7-B113-475A-A790-3F918DDFC14C"
  ]
  "InitialAccountOnMac" => true
  "InitialAccountSetupDate" => 2025-11-22 23:22:37 +0000
  "InitialSetupBuildVersion" => "24G325"
  "InitialSetupProductVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "LastPreLoginTasksPerformedBuild" => "24G325"
  "LastPreLoginTasksPerformedVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "LastPrivacyBundleVersion" => "2"
  "LastSeenBuddyBuildVersion" => "24G325"
  "LastSeenCloudProductVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "LastSeenDiagnosticsProductVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "LastSeenIntelligenceProductVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "LastSeenSiriProductVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "LastSeenSyncProductVersion" => "15.7.2"
  "MiniBuddyLaunchedPostMigration" => false
  "MiniBuddyLaunchReason" => 0
  "MiniBuddyShouldLaunchToResumeSetup" => false
  "NSAddServicesToContextMenus" => false
  "PreviousBuildVersion" => "0"
  "PreviousSystemVersion" => "0"
  "selectedFDEEscrowType" => "DeclinedFDE"
  "SkipExpressSettingsUpdating" => false
  "SkipFirstLoginOptimization" => false
}