Migrate or Fresh Install?

[Alameda]

My new MBP arrives in a week or two.

I have been migrating my apps and data from one Mac to another for about twenty years. I’m concerned that there could be a lot of junk that gets moved to my new MacBook which I don’t want.

I am thinking that maybe with this new Mac, I should just copy my Documents and re-install my apps instead.

I suppose this question gets asked a lot but I welcome input.

 

[Basic75]

I always manually copy my files. I don't want to migrate stale preferences or any other cruft from my old computer to my new one. It's not that much work to make all the important configuration changes to the system and major applications.

 

[benwiggy]

CRUFT!!!! 😱

It depends whether you want to have a fast and smooth transition with all your old settings and applications; or if you want to spend time and effort sorting through everything, deciding what to re-install, and then configuring all the preferences and settings.

Personally, I've always migrated. In the old days, I used to clone entire disks from old Macs to new ones, ensuring continuity.

The risk from redundant 4kb plists sitting on your hard drive is exactly zero. And you'd need thousands of them before they would amount to even the size of a single AAC music file. Preference files don't go off like the milk -- either you've got the values you want, or you haven't. Meh.

There's no real objective answer - it just depends whether you want to feel satisfied by the sense of having done some tidying, or by having done the transition quickly so you can get on with the work you actually want to do.

 

[Fishrrman]

Remember that the OS itself now resides in the "Sealed System Volume".

There's really no such thing as "a fresh install" insofar as the OS goes, because the state of the SSV -after- the "fresh" install will be exactly what's there NOW.

Do you have LOTS of stuff to migrate?
If so, doing the migration with setup asssistant during "the first boot" is probably the easiest.

Re preference files, etc. ...
If the apps that rely on such files are working fine for you now (on the old Mac), they'll probably work just as well on the NEW one. My opinion only.

I always migrate from a cloned backup drive created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Goes fastest that way.

 

[Azl]

I almost always do no migration and manually transfer everything I need.
But - I really like this Process and theres no hurry because the old machine is always available for some time.
And yes - for me it is a good moment to do some cleanup. But I guess its a matter of habits.
And while I know it isnt necessarily true - it „feels“ cleaner to me.

 

[Alameda]

Remember that the OS itself now resides in the "Sealed System Volume".

There's really no such thing as "a fresh install" insofar as the OS goes, because the state of the SSV -after- the "fresh" install will be exactly what's there NOW.

Do you have LOTS of stuff to migrate?
If so, doing the migration with setup asssistant during "the first boot" is probably the easiest.

Re preference files, etc. ...
If the apps that rely on such files are working fine for you now (on the old Mac), they'll probably work just as well on the NEW one. My opinion only.

I always migrate from a cloned backup drive created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Goes fastest that way.

Thank you. Truly, I appreciate the input.
I definitely know how to use a Time Machine backup to migrate, or I can use a Thunderbolt cable. I definitely get that. I understand that there is an SSV.

My worry is that I have been Migrating for about 20 years. I've done a lot of stuff like install various Perl packages and other unix tools and I think it would be best to restore my environment to a clean state.

As far as my documents, that's really easy, and restoring my Music files is also really easy. The Applications, like my MS Office, I am not so certain. I suppose I can just do a manual restore and if it doesn't work well, start over and use the Time Machine backup.

 

[Azl]

Thank you. Truly, I appreciate the input.
I definitely know how to use a Time Machine backup to migrate, or I can use a Thunderbolt cable. I definitely get that. I understand that there is an SSV.

My worry is that I have been Migrating for about 20 years. I've done a lot of stuff like install various Perl packages and other unix tools and I think it would be best to restore my environment to a clean state.

As far as my documents, that's really easy, and restoring my Music files is also really easy. The Applications, like my MS Office, I am not so certain. I suppose I can just do a manual restore and if it doesn't work well, start over and use the Time Machine backup.

I dont know about your Apps but from my experience most are very easy and usually fast to install. Office is pretty straight forward too.
I dont expect you would have to „start over“ with Time Machine.
I really have some stuff installed - and by ~3h id say 90% is done. And I do it slow on purpose.

 

[MacBH928]

Fresh is always better, but...

if you use the migration assistant will it copy over the buildup zombie files in the library from past apps installed/uninstalled or will it just copy the apps, files, and the OS configuration?

no need to bring over unnecessary junk

 

[Ruggy]

Do you use icloud or not?
If you do then what you can do is first decide what apps you do or don't want to back up. Deselect them all if you like
Then when give the option, choose to set up as a new machine- you don't migrate across anything which I've never found to be very good.
Sign in your new, pristine machine to your icloud account and it will ask you if you want to download all your passwords etc. It will then download all the things like passwords, wifi passwords etc that you saved in the last backup directly onto your new machine and that is incredibly useful.
You can choose to let it download photos or any files you've saved in icloud drive, but you can then download all your apps anew without worrying about confused updates etc because I agree, for a lot of these things it's better to start again.

 

[Alameda]

Do you use icloud or not?
If you do then what you can do is first decide what apps you do or don't want to back up. Deselect them all if you like
Then when give the option, choose to set up as a new machine- you don't migrate across anything which I've never found to be very good.
Sign in your new, pristine machine to your icloud account and it will ask you if you want to download all your passwords etc. It will then download all the things like passwords, wifi passwords etc that you saved in the last backup directly onto your new machine and that is incredibly useful.
You can choose to let it download photos or any files you've saved in icloud drive, but you can then download all your apps anew without worrying about confused updates etc because I agree, for a lot of these things it's better to start again.

Um… I don’t know if I use iCloud. I pay for it and backup my phone with it, and I use the Passwords app to share my passwords, Notes, Messages and Apple Photos (and other stuff) between my phone and Mac. But I don’t backup the whole Mac to iCloud, I use Time Machine.

 

[mdcmdcmdc]

I just went through the exact same question, going from an M1 MBP to an M5 Pro MBP.

I decided to use the Migration Assistant. As a matter of fact, it’s running right now, saying it has about 1-1/2 hours left. I chose that route because I wanted to have the new machine up and running with my familiar setup as quickly as possible.

Will it copy over apps and files that I haven’t used in a long time? Probably. Will there be preference files for apps I deleted years ago copied over? Probably. Will I notice the missing space or any performance hit? I’m guessing probably not. YMMV.

 

[mblm85]

Migrate.

a) Life is too short,
b) I did it once, reinstalling MacOS on an old machine. I think I saved about 90 megabytes. Total waste of effort for the 'gain', and,
c) I think installing fresh is a bit of a Windows mentality. Windows installs do need taking behind the bike shed and shooting every so often. I don't think it's a behaviour I've ever needed to bring over to the Mac.

 

[mdcmdcmdc]

c) I think installing fresh is a bit of a Windows mentality. Windows installs do need taking behind the bike shed and shooting every so often. I don't think it's s behaviour I've ever needed to bring over to the Mac.

macOS is really good at repairing itself. There are a lot of cleanup and permissions repair tasks that run automatically during the night and when the machine is idle. I always recommend against shutting a Mac down when you’re not using it. Just let it go to sleep, and it will do the rest.

 

[delsoul]

Migrate.

If it wasn’t a worthwhile option Apple wouldn’t keep including it as a feature they they promote for ease of use in transferring to a new unit. I migrated to a new laptop
The other day and it was showing about 18 hours. I forgot I had a thunderbolt cable laying around. I threw that on, it did dull transfer in probably 25 minutes flat. I hopped onto the new laptop and it was just like using the old one how i had it set up, just with the specs of
The new laptop

 

[Mrbobb]

Migrate if SoC -> SoC.
Fresh if Intel -> SoC.

Why do double work to bring old Intel code when new native SoC code is desired.

 

[benwiggy]

Why do double work to bring old Intel code when new native SoC code is desired.

The OS is exactly the same, whether you have Intel or AS. Same for "Universal Binary" apps. They have executables for both CPUs.

When you Migrate, you don't migrate the OS, anyway.