So just to close the loop (for me) on this, I created a single admin account whose name and short name were identical to the primary admin account on my old iMac. I ran Migration Assistant and pointed it at my Time Machine backup, which was running on a WD 3TB HD connected over USB 3.0. I selected the “replace account with same name” option when prompted (words to that effect, not an exact quote). To copy the approximately 1.2MM items discovered by MA, it took roughly seven hours. MA provided what turned out to be wildly pessimistic ETAs to nearly the end of the process, but the process was an unqualified success! To be sure, there was a bunch of tweaking of software permissions, preferences, etc., but nothing that made me ask “why didn’t this transfer over?” Everything I could reasonably expect to be copied from a late 2013 iMac running Catalina to a new MBP Pro (ironic redundancy intentional) was.
The basic MA worked for me too just fine, transferring everything over from my old 2013 MBP. I didn’t even create a new primary admin account. I just started in on the MA as soon as I opened it and said, sure, overwrite what’s there. Really, there is nothing to do with the MA except let it finish running.
It seems to be one of the few things about Apple that really “just works” these days. 
As the owner of a brand-new MacBook Pro 14" (as a Christmas present), I thought I’d query this group about migration.
I’m migrating from my 2015 MacBook Pro running Big Sur.
Perhaps I’m being a masochist, but I’d like to do this migration completely manually. I’d like to try this without using Migration Assistant at all. (I know if things go sideways, I can always start over and just use MA.)
My thoughts are to start up the laptop, create a new account with a new password, then update the software to the latest version.
Then, I’ll sign in to iCloud, and it should recover all of the items that are stored there. Since I use iCloud photos, I should get back all of my photos. I can then use the App Store to get back all of the apps that I bought there.
I use 1Password, so I’ll install it next, sign in there and I’ll have access to all of the serial numbers and paswords I need to install the rest of the software that’s not from the App Store.
Next, I use Resilio Sync to keep my Documents folders from my various computers in sync, so I’ll install that and get back all of my documents and they’ll reside in my Documents folder. I don’t keep any documents of note in any other location. I’ve replaced Google Backup and Sync, Dropbox and OneDrive with Resilio Sync to great effect.
Next, the Keychain. In the past, that used to be a problem, but with iCloud Keychain sync, that should come right down with everything else in iCloud. I shouldn’t have to do anything there.
By my count, that really only leaves Mail and Music. Once I sign in to all of my Mail accounts (which are all IMAP), I should have access to all of my messages stored on the servers. The only other thing to do is to export the archived mailboxes that are not on IMAP, and are local to my Big Sur laptop. So I’ll export those to mbox format and import them to the new computer.
That leaves Music. Since my other laptop is on Big Sur, I think that I can completely replace the Music folder from my new machine with the Music folder from the old one. There was some sort of file change in the Music folder, but I thing that was before Big Sur.
So, once I’ve signed into iCloud and retrieved all that it has to give me, and once I’ve reinstalled all of my applications and added the serial numbers (and configured my preferences, which I know is no small task), and once I’ve imported the local-only mailboxes that I have on my old laptop, and once I’ve copied over my Music folder from my old laptop, what’s missing? I’ll have to re-install Homebrew and pull down my packages from there for the command line stuff.
What else should I thing about in terms of migration?
By the way, I’m going to keep a careful log of all of this, so that I can refer to it in the future.
I can publish it somewhere, in case it could be of some use in helping others.
You could do all that… ut I just used MA when I migrated my 2015 rMBP in October…updated the old one to Monterey and did clones and backup first but just used MA for everything else. I did boot the new one and created the same first admin account on the new one…ran software update and then ran MA…answering replace when asked about moving the homed or for the first admin account.
All the discussion about starting over clean or doing it manually is just too much work for almost no gain IMO…and you will surely forget to install something or move a license file or utility config or something. If the old machine isn’t having issues…I would just use MA.
This was my path as well, mentioned several posts above. I moved the Documents and Desktop folders to iCloud before starting which meant they transferred when I logged into my account (same as Keychain). I downloaded required apps from the app store and installed anything I purchased directly from the developer. I keep records of serial numbers so that wasn’t too difficult.
I recreated my Exchange email account and it just repopulated over time.
1Password was the biggest hassle (deciding whether to keep it was part of the problem) but eventually I invested a day to go through every single entry and cleaned them up with new unique passwords.
It wasn’t as easy as using Migration Assistant but I think I have a much leaner system now and it was a cathartic experience :)
I used MA to migrate from my late 2013 MacBook Pro to my new 2021 MBP M1 Pro. Took about 6 hours. No problems. I suggest going the easy route.
Amen! I’m in the process of migrating my 2015 MBP to a new M1, and I’m taking this as an opportunity to start from “scratch”. Specifically, nearly everything I care about is either stored in a private git repo, a directory that I synchronize with Unison, or a directory I synchronize with google drive, but it’s a great opportunity to maybe not install old sketchy stuff, and to get rid of nasty cruft.
One unexpected side effect: I’m having serious second thoughts about installing all of the apps that can’t be installed from the Mac App store because they don’t want to abide by Apple’s sandbox rules: Zoom and Spotify are the two big ones so far.
EDIT: this is 100% not the easy way to do this. In case that wasn’t obvious…
I think what a lot of people seem to be forgetting are their app preferences. I have tons of apps and most of them I’ve configured heavily, including window toolbars. Although a clean install sounds nice, there’s a lot of manual work to get things right if you choose to go that path.
Exactly. The migration from Time Machine took 6 or 7 hours, but then everything basically “just worked” with the same histories and settings, etc.
I don’t (didn’t) see app prefs as a big deal. I’m pleased I went the ‘manual’ route as it meant years and years of outdated and unnecessary cruft was gone. It gave me an opportunity to make a conscious assessment of what I really needed on my machine rather than blindly copying it all across.
The app I use with the greatest amount of customisation is Capture One - I simply imported the Workspace prefs - took about 10 seconds. The Affinity Suite of Apps was similar - copy the Studio Presets. I’m sure most apps would have a p-list file somewhere which would do similar things if it mattered that much.
I’m not suggesting this is the ‘best’ way and not trying to encourage people to do it. I just like being in total control of my machine - but I can see why others might prefer the easy way.
As for the time it took, I’m pretty sure it was well inside 6 or 7 hours - probably closer to 1 or 2 - helped greatly by my pre-emptive implementation of iCloud. I spent a lot of time sorting out 1Password but that was because I wanted to change every password I had - I could have simply imported the old passwords and been up and running in a few seconds but I wanted to completely reassess my security.
I this thread you can see my experience with not using Migration Assistant. Surprised by Apple fast delivery promise
This may not apply to you. In addition to what you mentioned, I also copy over the .emacs file and .ssh directory from my home folder. Sometimes I’ll copy over the contents of /usr/local and /opt/local.
If you use your computer as a host for any web-based services, don’t forget /Library/WebServer (for your content) and /private/etc/apache2 (mainly for the httpd.conf file).
I would copy the entire contents of your home directory.
Your Library folder might be problematic. It contains internal per-user data for system features and apps (including sandboxed data for applications from the Mac App Store). The content should be automatically (re-)created when you install/run each app for the first time, but you will lose things like application preferences.
I would copy the Library directory and deal with the possibility that something might break, because I want to keep a lot of the data that’s stored there. For example:
- Firefox profiles (~/Library/Application Support/Firefox)
- Microsoft Office settings and templates (~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office)
- Most application preferences (~/Library/Preferences/…)
- User keychains (~/Library/Keychains), especially if they’re not synced to iCloud
Applications should see this data and use it (upgrading it if necessary) without incident. This is what happens when you upgrade an app (or macOS itself) in-place on a running system, so it should also happen when the app launches on a new system and finds a copy of its data there.
The downside to migrating all of this is that there may be some applications that choke upon seeing old data. You would have to locate and delete its data in order to recover. I haven’t seen this on my systems, but it’s never safe to assume that every application will always work properly.
The other downside is that there may be cruft leftover from apps you have deleted (or chose to not migrate from the old system), and it won’t go away until you delete it.
Here’s a somewhat different issue… I have a 2012 MacBook Pro (w/ 1TB SSD) running 10.14.6 Mojave. It can upgrade as far as Catalina (10.15.7). I’m planning on replacing it with a 14" MacBook Pro or possibly an Air, but definitely some form of M-series. I’ve been upgrading with Migration assistant or its predecessors for ages, and have accrued a lifetime of cruft. I’m also experiencing an annoying, ongoing issue with Suggestd quitting unexpectedly, maybe 10 times a day… " Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInternalInconsistencyException’, reason: ‘Asset identifier storage too small’…terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException"
No noticeable problems with that other than error messages to dismiss. Nothing seems to fix it, including reformatting the drive back to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), installing a clean Mojave and using migration assistant to restore. I’m worried that migrating everything from this machine to Monterrey on a new one could carry that issue forward. I’m also rather intimidated by the idea of a manual migration. Thoughts, anyone?
I used Migration Assistant with Thunderbolt 3 connection between my M1 iMac and old 2017 iMac. I don’t remember the elapsed time but it was just a couple of hours from macOS 11 to same. Smooth migration. Have used same approach with M1 MacBook Airs, also no issues.
That does seem to be the fastest and, by far, the simplest.
Is there a reason you haven’t tried updating from Mojave to Catalina to solve the problem? If you do end up using MA (which would certainly be my instinct), you’ll need to (ought to) do that anyway.
There were several 32-bit applications I didn’t want to do without. Recently, one I use a lot was upgraded (finally) to 64-bit, and I’m starting to feel ready to make the leap. I have corresponded with the developer of Etrecheck about the suggestd crash, and he felt it was likely to continue to be a problem without a totally clean install and manual import of my necessary old data on a new Mac 
I guess, at this point I could try the Catalina upgrade on this machine and if the problem continues, I’m no worse off than before.
Migration Assistant. You can do it either over wifi or if you have ethernet capability for your new machine over ethernet but I would definitely put the older one on ethernet since it’s got much slower wifi. Alternatively…run Time Machine on the old then shut it down, move the TM drive to new and then use MA to migrate. Alternatively…clone the old one and migrate from the clone.
Using MA to migrate from the old one requires running MA on both computers.
I’ve done them both using MA over wifi and MA from a TM drive…the latter said it was going to take 91 hours for the first couple of hours and still said 91 when I went to bed that evening before being done the next morning. The MA over wifi took a couple of hours (2015 rMBP to M1 Pro MBP) and the TM one was a 2014 Mini with a USB3 (or maybe earlier, can’t remember) 2.5 inch Seagate Backup Plus external 5400 rpm spinner which was it’s TM drive. The mini os crapped out so I nuked the internal and did a recovery to Monterey then MA. It’s pretty slow running Monterey naturally…but it’s just an ethernet connected file server for me and the only thing it does is serve as one of my two network drives for my homegrown TM equivalent solution. TM doesn’t work worth a damn over wifi so I rolled my own solution with CarboyCopyCloner many months ago and that one is pretty bulletproof.