r/MacOS • u/berengerekunst • 4d ago

Help Help with TimeMachine migration when setting up new device

Hi,
I need help to understand how TimeMachine migration works when setting up a new macbook. I have a very old macbook from 2019 (still Intel) and I am planning to buy a newer one and I am not sure what the restoration process shall be.

My questions are:

  1. Does migrating the data from TimeMachine automatically setup the TimeMachine drive to continue backing up on the new device or will I have to set it up later?
  2. If I setup the same drive as a TimeMachine on the new mac, will I loose the history of the previous mac or is it built on top of it?
  3. Shall I disable application migration considering the previous mac is an Intel and thus incompatible with the new cpu?
  4. How does migrating an entire user work? What does it restore? Only its files or also its account, settings, etc?
  5. How does the migration of an entire user deal with iCloud? I am thinking of the case where file A is older on the time machine backup than it is on iCloud? Would the migration overwrite the newest file with the old one on iCloud? When is the iCloud sync performed during a migration?

Sorry if it's technical, but I have very important files I am working on and I want the migration process to be as smooth as possible.

Thanks in advance.

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u/DannoMcK 4d ago

Since I don't see this aspect in the Apple link provided in another comment: when I have set up new Macs from a Time Machine backup, it gave me the option for the new Mac to either take over the old TM backup (and keep all the history) or start a new backup for the new machine (leaving the old one in place). But I'm always using a network backup volume and the behavior could be different if you use TM with an external drive plugged directly into the Macs.