I recently got a new computer and naturally wanted to transfer over all my data. Apple provides a built-in way to do this with a tool called Migration Assistant. However, what they don't tell you immediately is that you're going to need a Thunderbolt cable to have any hope of completing the data transfer in a reasonable amount of time. The time estimated was 64 hours... Well, that's a lot. ![[CleanShot 2025-01-02 at [email protected]]] What makes this really a lot of time is that both computers cannot be used during the transfer. Unless you have a third computer, you are effectively barred from using a computer for the duration. I thought I'd just connected a USB cable to speed things up, but that doesn't work. It turns out you can indeed speed up the process but you need a Thunderbolt cable. These cables are fast, but they are also somewhat rare. Easy enough to buy online but you cannot simply walk down to the corner store and pick one up. Anyway, with 24hr shipping I thought I'd just stop the transfer and do it again once the cable arrived. # A manual migration However, I'm not that patient when it comes to new shiny computers. So i went about doing parts of the migration manually. The long and short of it is this: 1. It's not worth your time 2. Order a Thunderbolt cable when you order your computer, if you don't have one already If you decide to do it anyway... here's what i suggest. - Back up your whole `$HOME` dir somewhere so that if you forget to copy anything over its not lost - hopefully all your importat docs are under `$HOME` - beware [[OrbStack]] if you happen to use it. it uses a sparse file for data storage, which migration programs seem unable to handle. you will end up copying about 8tb (yes, terabytes) of nonexistant data. they themself recommend you simply delete your data and do not migrate it - Copy over the application support files for any applications you intend to continue using - Browsers were my most important migration here. I don't want to get everything set up and logged in all over again on the new computer, so copy the entirety of each of your browser profiles over directly, then open the browser. Firefox worked flawlessly and chrome worked fairly well, i had some issues with Brave But seriously, just let migration assistant handle it for you. You will save yourself lots of time. Just get a Thunderbolt cable first and the migration will likely take a few hours. You can also delete various dev artifacts on disk prior to migration. For example, delete cache dirs like the `.next` dir in NextJS projects or any `node_modules` folders on your system.