The best approach would be to reinstall the apps afresh. However, that may not always be desirable, as it will involve a lot of work.
For e.g. user has heavily customised the apps, the apps have a lot of preferences items which the user has spent hours tweaking, or the apps have plugins that the user has installed etc.
With fresh install approach, these actions will be have to be meticulously repeated and is prone to human error.
To handle this scenario, preferences export can be performed in various ways. For e.g. many apps save their preferences in file(s) under Library
. If such file(s) can be reliably identified, the user can copy them over in the corresponding location in the new system. Some apps maintain their preferences in an easily accessible configuration text files which can be copied over.
The previous approach may still involve a lot of work and may not be desirable. A simpler approach would be using macOS Migration Assistant. This feature lets you easily transfer settings, apps and data from one Mac to another.
A very helpful and concise guide on Migration Assistnat and its usage can be found in the Apple Support Article, How to move your content to a new Mac.