MacOS allows you to set up your Mac with other separate user accounts. By this way, there are multiple people that can use one computer. However, all files, app settings, and other data of each user are kept independently from each other.
But what to do if you are using two Macs, and you’d like to move a user account from one Mac to another one? If you are looking for a solution to help you do that, then you can find the solution in this post. We’ll show you a way to transfer a user account from a Mac to another Mac.
How to move an account from a Mac to another Mac
Before getting started, there are some questions handling this appropriately.
- Each of user account has a separate Time Machine backup.
- Backblaze is enabled to run for cloud-based archiving on the computer.
- The received Mac does not have enough storage to use Photos library in place, moving all photos to an external drive is requested.
Time Machine backups are good, and it’s the right place to begin. However, the large Photos library might complicate matters. Here are our suggestions:
- Copy the Photos library (including any photos or videos which are not imported that you’d like to store with it) to an external drive. With other files, you have to reduce the size of the user account so that process to move it to another Mac can be successful.
- Do a manual Time Machine backup of the old computer by going to Time Machine> Backup Now.
- Now, once two copies are in place, you can delete the media from your original account. (You can also make a third copy as your liking.)
- Unmount the Time Machine volume from a Mac, and then mount it on the other Mac.
- Open Migration Assistant by navigating to Applications> Utilities.
- Follow the on-screen instruction until you go to the “Select Information to Transfer” Untick all the boxes, but the one for the user account to import.
- Click Continue and wait for the process to complete.
Your user account, along with associated files from your old Mac is now available on the new one. However, with applications, you have to manually copy or reinstall them. There might also be issues with apps purchased across multiple Apple ID accounts.
Also read: HOW TO ADJUST THE ACCENT COLOR ON MACOS
If you are using Backblaze, the software has an option, called Inherit Backup State that keeps your old backup files at its servers, and it won’t re-upload files if it’s already got fresh copies. It includes your account’s files. Ensure that you have an external drive including photos and other media attached so that you can add that to the backup.
There are also instructions from Backblaze on how to inherit a backup, but we advise you to contact the company to handhold better if you see the instructions don’t match the outcome that you want.
