How to restore from Time Machine? Do I need to use Migration assistant?

[MalagLagoon]

I'm testing the waters with restoring from a Time Machine backup. My backup is on an external LaCie Hard Drive with a Thunderbolt 2 connection. I'm a little confused because of this article where they bring up this Migration Assistant software:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981

Maybe I'm thinking of when I had El Capitan (I'm using Mojave right now) - but I don't remember having to use Migration Assistant to restore my MacBook. Is using the Migration Assistant the best way to restore from Time Machine?

 

[Fishrrman]

What condition is your MacBook in right now?
Is it bootable?
Why do you need to "restore"...?

 

[leman]

Time machine presents the backup to your system as a list of folders with a backup date. Depending on what you want to do, you can either use the Migration Assistant to restore the entire machine to a backed up state (this makes most sense if you have a clean installation), use the Finder time machine interface to rollback individual files or simple copy files back from the TM volume manually.

 

[Significant1]

Depends on what you want. You can also roll back in time in finder, mail, contacts (and likely more apps), by running the timemachine app (can also be done from menu-bar, if you have it visible) while finder og mail is active. Must say, I am not sure how usefull timemachine are in apps like mail and contacts, which syncronizes with a server. And lastly you can manually browse the through the filestructure of the backup, to dig out files.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Migration Assistant is for restoring from Big Sur. If you are using MacOS earlier than Big Sur, you can simply restore from Time Machine.

 

[MalagLagoon]

What condition is your MacBook in right now?
Is it bootable?
Why do you need to "restore"...?

I'm sending my MBP in to have the batteries changed - I think they may be swollen. (not sure)

So, I'm moving all my stuff to another MBP before mailing off my other MBP to Apple

 

[polaris20]

Migration Assistant is for restoring from Big Sur. If you are using MacOS earlier than Big Sur, you can simply restore from Time Machine.

Bumping this because I came across this today; any idea why Apple decided to go this route for recovery? Seems cumbersome, and not as straightforward as the old "recover from TimeMachine" method.