How Can I Move a private Application and Its Settings to Another Mac? [Video]

Dear Lifehacker,
I just got a new Mac and need to transfer a number of of my old applications and preferences over. Migration Assistant looks an all-or-nothing deal-how can I migrate just the ones I need?

Signed,
Mystified by Migration

Dear Mystified,

Migration Assistant is a handy gizmo on the way to transfer all of your applications, settings, documents, and other files over, but as a way to start fresh it doesn’t offer you an awful lot to work with. Mac apps are great inside the sense that they’re mostly portable-all it’s essential migrate an app is drag it from one computer to the opposite. However, to be able to migrate all of your carefully crafted preferences for those apps, you’ll must do a piece more work.

The biggest roadblock this is that while most applications have a preference file stored in ~/Library/Preferences, it should sometimes be hard to tell which one is the only you would like (it’s also hard to seek out what you need the various hundreds of alternative .pref files). Furthermore, some apps have information stored in ~/Library/Application Support or other places, and it’s going to take a mighty long time to manually seek out every file and folder that you simply might to carry over. Luckily, there’s a simple workaround using uninstallation apps.

While OS X comes with out built-in system for uninstalling applications, lots of third-party developers have created programs that uninstall other Mac apps. My personal favorite is previously mentioned AppCleaner , but in the event you already have a favourite, that are meant to work for this too. These apps are designed to seek out an app’s scattered preference files and trash them consisting of the original app. Since those are an analogous files we’re seeking to migrate, we will modify how we use the app to make it suit our needs.

The easiest method to assemble up all an app’s associated preference files is to just drag it right into AppCleaner. It’s going to show grab the required preference files and folders and list them for you. You might probably uncheck any ” cache” folders, since those won’t hold any of your settings. Note the paths of the opposite files or folders, then hit Delete. Don’t worry, they’re just going to head into your Trash-we’re going to snatch them right back out. For sure, while you’re uncomfortable trashing them (or your Trash is solely already cluttered), you possibly can navigate to their specific folders and manually drag them out. I just find trashing them easier, since it puts them multi function place with the clicking of a button.

Open up your Trash folder within the Finder, or whatever folder you place the files in. Put the files onto your flash drive, Dropbox, or whatever other temporary location you’re using to migrate them. Once the files are in your new Mac, drag the applying into the /Applications folder and drag the preference files into the paths you wrote down earlier. In the event you open up the applying, it is advisable to find that each one your settings were restored. Though, in case you’re transferring enough apps that this becomes inconvenient and tedious, you’re probably best off using Migration Assistant to transfer your Applications and Library folder, then just uninstall the apps you don’t want with AppCleaner.

Signed,
Lifehacker.

P.S. Got your personal preferred method for migrating apps and settings to a new computer? Share them with us within the comments.

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This post is tagged: application support, library application, mighty long time, migration assistant, uninstalling applications