During the process, you enter some information, such as your Apple ID, so your iCloud account is activated, but, for the most part, your Mac will be a tabula rasa-a blank slate. When you do a clean installation, you let macOS run its Setup Assistant and create a new, empty user account. For this reason, you might want to consider doing a clean installation. This can be problematic because if you have been upgrading your Macs over the years by installing new versions of macOS over old ones, or migrating data from old Macs to new ones, you’ll have hundreds, even thousands of old files that you no longer need taking up space. However, the disadvantage of using the Migration Assistant is that all your files get copied. It copies all your files, and you can choose which user accounts get copied over to the new Mac. Select the Mac or hard drive from which you want to copy data, and then select what type of data you want to transfer-user accounts, applications, other files and folders, and settings-and wait while the files get copied.Īs you can see, Migration Assistant is easy to use. This only works on Macs with Intel processors. Connect the Macs using target disk mode see this Apple support document for more on target disk mode.Connect the new Mac to a hard drive you’ve used for Time Machine backups.If either mac is running Mac OS X El Capitan or earlier, make sure they are connected to the same wi-fi network. If you use wi-fi, with Macs running macOS Sierra or later, Migration Assistant creates a peer-to-peer wi-fi network to transfer files.

To use this tool on a Mac, do one of the following: When you set up a new Mac, the Migration Assistant offers to copy your files. This feature is similar to Setup Assistant, which only runs during the setup of a new Mac therefore, if you have set up your Mac as new, you will have to use Migration Assistant to copy files from either a backup or a different Mac. How to migrate files to a new MacĪpple includes a useful tool as part of macOS: Migration Assistant. Here’s how to migrate your files to your new Mac, or do a clean installation, and the pros and cons of both methods. When you get a new Mac, it might be a good idea to do a clean installation starting from scratch with a brand-new operating system, and copy the files that you need from your old Mac manually. But when you set up a new Mac, should you migrate your old files or do a clean installation? If you’ve just bought a new Mac, and you’re upgrading from an older computer, you want all of your files and data to be accessible on the new machine. Apple + How To How to Set Up a New Mac: Should You Migrate or Do a Clean Installation?

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