I have been using a Macmini for home use and a MacBook Pro for work. As I’ve retired I want to merge all the information into one of the Macs [the MacBook Pro] which has plenty of disc space. Is there something special I need to do or can I just use Migration Assistant?
What do you mean by “all the information”?
If you mean your documents, I’d just connect the two computers over a LAN, turn on file sharing and drag/drop the documents from one computer to the other.
Migrating a Photos or Music library can be a bit more tricky, mostly because you’re going to want to merge the content from one computer into the others’ library. And I don’t think Migration Assistant will be able to do that.
For Photos, you can drag/drop one computer’s library to the other. This will leave you with two Photos libraries. Then you can open the destination library and import from the other. See also Import photos from another library in Photos on Mac - Apple Support
For Music, it’s not quite as easy. You can (I think) copy one computer’s media folder to the other computer (to a new location) along with its library, but if you open that library afterward, I don’t know if it will find the files. If it does, you can export the library from one and import it into the other. Then consolidate the tracks to bring them all into a single media folder. But I’m really not sure if it will work.
I think you can also launch Music on the destination and then import from the other computer’s media folder (or maybe from its library, but I don’t know if you have that option like you do in Photos). That should pull in the music files, but I don’t think it will transfer your playlists or any metadata that isn’t stored in the tracks’ ID3 tags.
For migrating apps, I think it’s easier and safer to just reinstall from whatever media or download you previously used. I wouldn’t try anything else unless that fails.
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I use Chronosync for synchronising data between 2 Macs. I don’t think its possible to copy apps and settings over in this way (or with Finder).
It might be possible to selectively use Migration Assistant to, for example, copy Photos, Music and TV libraries but my understanding is that it will overwrite whatever is on the destination computer (taking into account @shamino’s comments)
Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I realized that the two mac have basically the same apps, etc. and what I’m primarily worried about is Mail in that while there is a lot of overlap on the emails stored on each machine, they are not exactly the same. Is there a way to do that relatively simply. I do have iCloud storage.
Are those emails stored locally on these Macs? Or are they on different POP3 or IMAP servers?
If it’s the latter, you can set up one of the Macs to access the same IMAP account as the other Mac. You can then unify folders or copy from various folders to one folder, even local if desired. I’ve moved hundreds of emails across various accounts and servers this way using just macOS Mail and while it wasn’t always super fast, it ultimately always ended up doing what I needed. You can even use smart folders to tell you if there are emails that only exist in one folder rather than both to help you manually sync up contents.
If it’s the former, you can use macOS Mail to export entire email folders on the source Mac to file. Then use file sharing to copy that file to the destination Mac and use macOS Mail’s Import Mailboxes… to create a new local folder with the contents of the old folder. Such a local folder can also later be pushed back up to an IMAP server if desired. These things are also something I have successfully been able to use macOS Mail for myself. It’s been a while though, these days it’s all just IMAP for me.
Extending what the others have written, taking advantage of cloud-based syncing might be the simplest approach by letting each machine leverage the same service (e.g., iCloud Photos) so that the two source computers end up with the same content. The process will depend on the nature of the source material, but the process should be straightforward.
For E-mail, connect both to the same IMAP (not POP) server. That should synchronized the two mailboxes (and when it is done with the sync, both computers — and the E-mail server — will have identical content).
For Photos, iCloud Photo will get the job done.
For documents, you might use iCloud’s Documents folder (or DropBox, Box Sync, Google Drive, OneDrive, or others). If you have related/associated folders (same name in the same place in the folder hierarchy), you might want to rename one of them as a safety precaution. But most services should handle that well (note that if you have two files of different vintage with the same name, only the most recent one will survive).
If one of your machines is limited on space all of these cloud-based sync systems have the ability to NOT store the actual files on a machine (they only leave a small place-holder) so it won’t fill up.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for all the clear and useful replies. I will get this done over the holiday weekend and get back with how it went.