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I'm thinking about switching to new Mac with ARM in next months. I usually backup with TimeMachine my Mac. 3 years ago I moved from MacBook Air to MacBook Pro really smoothly using backup from TimeMachine. I'm now asking if it will be as easy as last time doing it from an x86 Mac to a ARM one. For example all binaries files in my mac will not work on the new one, are they copied anyway? I know that Rosetta exists and it can run x86 binaries, but I definitely prefer pure ARM install of software instead of have the Mac full of old binaries. Does Time Machine copy smartly the applications or I need to do it manually? Is there a way to copy only the data and not the executable files?

Suppose that I have to transfer all the x86 executable files. Is there a script to clean the Mac from unnecessary files? This should be in another question, but since is quite related to what I'm talking about: how can I clean my Mac from old and uninstalled application data? My Library folder is full of files created by applications that I have uninstalled years ago (some of them were uninstalled on the old mac and Time Machine brought their data on the new Mac) and I want to clean up it; I guess that this problem affects also other folders.

Thank you!

L.A.
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2 Answers2

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Having just done this myself, I can confirm that migrating from a Time Machine backup works very well from an Intel Mac to an M1.

As far as I can tell, everything gets copied over, so this includes your entire user account, system preferences, Unix files in /usr/local, and applications.

A few apps were reported to be 'damaged': sometimes this could be fixed by deleting the quarantine attribute; otherwise the files did need to be re-downloaded. Some (but not all) complex apps with installers needed to be reinstalled.

Interestingly, even a software licence key that's supposed to be linked to the hardware, came across with all my licences on it!

As for removing old Application Support folders for no-longer-used apps: that's easy enough to do yourself. You can check for plists in the Preferences folder, if every Kb matters.

I wouldn't recommend using 'cleaning' apps, as they can delete the wrong stuff and leave stuff that ought to be deleted, just as easily as you can.

benwiggy
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  • And what about for example /usr/bin or /usr/bin/local? They contain binaries from brew as example – L.A. Dec 31 '20 at 18:03
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    /usr/bin belongs to the OS. Attempt no landings there. I'm not sure about /usr/bin/local, but if you're keen to only deal with AS binaries, then you'll want to reinstall the latest versions of whatever you have. – benwiggy Dec 31 '20 at 18:05
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Homebrew files get copied and continue to run the x86 executables using Rosetta. I wasn't aware of this until I ran into a problem while trying to link an x86 library installed with the old brew with some new code. I guess the best is to upgrade and ran without having to rely on Rosetta.

Here's what happens to the Homebrew files in more detail and how to upgrade to the new M1 arm64 version: https://github.com/Homebrew/discussions/discussions/417

nuno
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  • The question here isn't specifically about Homebrew, have you been looking for https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/410825/apple-silicon-port-all-homebrew-packages-under-usr-local-opt-to-opt-homebrew ? – nohillside Feb 13 '23 at 15:53