Time Machine and Migration Assistant can be useful if you want to copy your entire setup from one computer to another. But if you’d prefer to clean house with a new machine and selectively move files without losing all of your user preferences, you can. You just need to know which files to move.

• Mac Transfer To New Computer
• Transferring Data From One Mac To Another
• Mac To Mac File Transfer

If you want to copy over absolutely everything, this probably isn’t the method for you – Migration Assistant will work a little better. But if you’re interested in capturing Preferences related to the OS, like Dock and trackpad settings, this should get you there.

Technology seems to be advancing ever faster, and old computers can't seem to keep up with with growing space and performance needs. If this is the case for you, and you decide to invest in a new Apple Mac computer, you will most likely want to transfer all of your data from your old Mac to your new. I have just purchased a new Mac and would like to transfer a few programs from my old machine. I'd rather not have to re-install some the commercial programs, and in a couple of cases I don't have the install disks anymore.

Setting Up Your New Mac

Because you’ll be copying over the exact settings from your old Mac, you need to make sure your new Mac’s user is configured in the same way as your old user. The most important thing here is the account name, or short name, of your account. If you’re not sure what that is, look at the name of your home folder. That will be the same as your account name.

Make sure that the account name for your user on the new Mac is exactly the same.

Prepare Your Transfer Media

The easiest way to handle this process is over a USB drive. If you don’t have one, you can use a hard drive as well. You could even use network storage, but if we’re transferring a lot of data over WiFi, you won’t have much fun.

It can be helpful when organizing your media to recreate the original file path. For example, if you have a file from /Users/alexander/Library/Preferences, you could put that in a folder with the exact same file path. That way you won’t misplace them on the new system. This is particularly important because preference files in the wrong place are useless.

You want there to be enough green (which represents free memory) to open other applications. Just and then open Dashboard. Free program for memory mac. Using iStat Pro is a free Dashboard widget that provides tons of system information about your Mac, including memory usage. (To do so, you can press F4 on most Mac keyboards, or swipe left with four fingers on a trackpad.) The iStat Pro widget is shown below. If you're an avid Dashboard user, this is a good way to keep tabs on how much RAM is free and allocated.

Home Folder

The content of your home folder obviously needs to make it over to your new Mac. Most users keep their files here, so copying over the content to your new Mac is a no-brainer.

Copy over everything but the Library folder. You can copy the files by dragging and dropping, just as you would with a normal directory. We will deal with your Library folder next.

User Preferences

Under macOS, user preferences can be stored in a couple of places. The canonical location is ~/Library/Preferences which is what macOS’s system application typically use.

To get there, find the Library folder inside your user folder.

You can also choose “Go to folder…” in the Finder menu and then type in ~/Library/Preferences.

Inside this folder, you’ll find a ton of Property Lists or PLISTs. These are the actual files that contain your preferences.

There are two routes you can take here. The first is to copy over every file. However, if you don’t also copy over all the apps associated with those preferences, you’ll get a lot of junk.

It’s better to copy everything that starts with com.apple. These are the preferences that relate solely to macOS system programs, like the Dock and other Apple products like Final Cut Pro. This is my preferred method, and it grabs the most relevant stuff.

Whichever you choose, drag and drop your selected files into the correct folder on your transfer media.

Applications

Copying applications is tricky. Not all applications put their files in the same place, so you’ll usually need to rummage through your system to make sure you’ve got everything. Because of this, I’d recommend a fresh install on the new system.

If you must copy an application manually, you should try to bring along the its files. We can re-purpose AppCleaner to help us find them all.

AppCleaner helps users uninstall applications by revealing all the files associated with a given app. It works by searching a few specific places for files that include the application’s name.

Search for an application’s files by dropping its icon onto the AppCleaner window.

To view a file’s location in Finder, click the magnifying glass.

Some files won’t be needed. You don’t need logs, crash reports, or anything stored in /var/. All these components will get rebuilt on the new system as needed. The files in ~Library/Application Support/ normally aren’t necessary either.

You probably won’t be able to copy larger apps like Photoshop. Programs like that litter your system with files, and it’s hard to get them all. There’s also licensing files you probably can’t access. You can export workspaces and keyboard shortcuts separately, and that’s normally what people want to preserve.

Finishing Up

Once you have your transfer media loaded up, copy everything onto your new system and reboot. Test everything out, and make sure that you’ve copied over the stuff that’s most important to you before disposing of your old machine.

A Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel-Macs

The Knowledgebase article Intel-based Mac: Some migrated applications may need to be updated refers to methods of dealing with migrating from PowerPC chips to Intel with the Migration Assistant safely. The authors of this tip have not had a chance to verify this works in all instances, or that it avoids the 10.6.1 and earlier Guest Account bug that caused account information to get deleted upon use of the Migration/Setup Assistant. However, a well backed up source that includes at least two backups of all the data that are not connected to your machine will help you avoid potential issues, should they arise. In event it does not work, follow the steps below.

If you are migrating a PowerPC system (G3, G4, or G5) to an Intel-Mac be careful what you migrate. Keep in mind that some items that may get transferred will not work on Intel machines and may end up causing your computer's operating system to malfunction.

Rosetta supports 'software that runs on the PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor that are built for Mac OS X'. This excludes the items that are not universal binaries or simply will not work in Rosetta:

• Classic Environment, and subsequently any Mac OS 9 or earlier applications
• Screensavers written for the PowerPC System Preference add-ons
• All Unsanity Haxies Browser and other plug-ins
• Contextual Menu Items
• Applications which specifically require the PowerPC G5 Kernel extensions
• Java applications with JNI (PowerPC) libraries

See also What Can Be Translated by Rosetta.

In addition to the above you could also have problems with migrated cache files and/or cache files containing code that is incompatible.

If you migrate a user folder that contains any of these items, you may find that your Intel-Mac is malfunctioning. It would be wise to take care when migrating your systems from a PowerPC platform to an Intel-Mac platform to assure that you do not migrate these incompatible items.

Whether you require a video recorder program for Windows or your Mac, here is a quick guide on the key-features of a strong, reliable free video recorder, as well as a list of the best 20 video recording software currently available and completely cost-free. Another video recording software we are going to introduce is Any Video Converter Ultimate for Mac, which is able to record screen and video, including streaming videos, online videos, live sports, etc in fast speed with excellent audio & video quality. Top 10 best Video Capture Software 2015 for Win/Mac It is to be noted that the video capturing has been always loved by the users and for the same reason it is a program that is wanted by the people and it is always looked for. The easy-to-use Debut Video Capture lets you capture video either through streaming content, including Hulu and YouTube, or from footage you obtain with a webcam or a VHS recorder or DVD player. With this software, you can record audio, either using a microphone for your own voice or speakers to capture what's streaming on your screen. Free video capture mac.

If you have problems with applications not working, then completely uninstall said application and reinstall it from scratch. Take great care with Java applications and Java-based Peer-to-Peer applications. Many Java apps will not work on Intel-Macs as they are currently compiled. As of this time Limewire, Cabos, and Acquisition are available as universal binaries. Do not install browser plug-ins such as Flash or Shockwave from downloaded installers unless they are universal binaries. The version of OS X installed on your Intel-Mac comes with special compatible versions of Flash and Shockwave plug-ins for use with your browser.

The same problem will exist for any hardware drivers such as mouse software unless the drivers have been compiled as universal binaries. For third-party mice the current choices are USB Overdrive or SteerMouse. Contact the developer or manufacturer of your third-party mouse software to find out when a universal binary version will be available.

Also be careful with some backup utilities and third-party disk repair utilities. Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro , SuperDuper , and Drive Genius work properly on Intel-Macs with Leopard. The same caution may apply to the many 'maintenance' utilities that have not yet been converted to universal binaries. Leopard Cache Cleaner, Onyx, TinkerTool System, and Cocktail are now compatible with Leopard.

Before migrating or installing software on your Intel-Mac check MacFixit's Rosetta Compatibility Index.

Additional links that will be helpful to new Intel-Mac users:

Because Migration Assistant isn't the ideal way to migrate from PowerPC to Intel Macs, using Target Disk Mode, copying the critical contents to CD and DVD, an external hard drive, or networking will work better when moving from PowerPC to Intel Macs. The initial section below discusses Target Disk Mode. It is then followed by a section which discusses networking with Macs that lack Firewire.

If both computers support the use of Firewire then you can use the following instructions:

1. Repair the hard drive and permissions using Disk Utility.

2. Backup your data. This is vitally important in case you make a mistake or there's some other problem.

3. Connect a Firewire cable between your old Mac and your new Intel Mac.

4. Startup your old Mac in Transferring files between two computers using FireWire.

5. Startup your new Mac for the first time, go through the setup and registration screens, but do NOT migrate data over. Get to your desktop on the new Mac without migrating any new data over.

If you are not able to use a Firewire connection (for example you have a Late 2008 MacBook that only supports USB:)

1. Set up a local home network: Creating a small Ethernet Network.

Mac Transfer To New Computer

2. If you have a MacBook Air or Late 2008 MacBook see the following:

Copy the following items from your old Mac to the new Mac:

In your /Home/ folder: Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites folders.

In your /Home/Library/ folder:

/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder) /Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)

Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)

/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder) /Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder) /Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder) /Home /Library/Calendars (copy the whole folder) /Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder) /Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)

If you want cookies:

/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist /Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist

For Entourage users:

Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft.

Credit goes to Macjack for this information.

If you need to transfer data for other applications please ask the vendor or ask in the Discussions where specific applications store their data.

Transferring Data From One Mac To Another

Mac To Mac File Transfer

5. Once you have transferred what you need restart the new Mac and test to make sure the contents are there for each of the applications.

Written by Kappy with additional contributions from a brody.Revised 5/21/2011

Apr 12, 2012 11:33 AM