Moving to the new mac? Want to keep your old configuration from old to new system?

Background

In 2022, I stumbled upon a challenge when I finally purchased a new MacBook with an M1 Apple Silicon arm-based processor (I actually had the M2). Although I was previously familiar with using M1 Macs at work, I quickly discovered that the change in architecture also brought about new directories for some fundamental software, such as even e.g. brew.

The primary objective is to maintain the same software settings along with their configurations. I don’t have an extensive understanding of what directories macOS apps typically use, but I can confirm there are several of them.

~/Library/Application Support

~/Library/Group Containers

~/Library/Preferences

I decided to go with Arq Backup, which proved to be a pain to configure, and unfortunately, it doesn’t truly operate as a reliable Time Machine alternative.

Quick Win for inpatient

Just take your whole user folder /Users/$USERNAME/. Drawbacks? You might end up moving a lot of unnecessary, heavy files. Altenatively, I suggest…

My (so called) minimal setup

Set Back up specific folders:

First:

/Users/$USERNAME/                                 # exclude only ./Library/Application Support
/Users/$USERNAME/Library/Application Support

Then under Application Support add several exclusions depending on your taste:

_/Library/Application Support/Caches
_/Library/Application Support/Google
_/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter
_/Library/Application Support/Dropbox             # I assume that was Intel macOS directory. I don't see it anymore on Silicon-based Mac
_/Library/Application Support/MobileSync
_/Library/Application Support/Microsoft

Conclusion

In my opinion, there is no silver bullet. The content of this folder will vary depending on the software you have installed. If your goal is to back up as few megabytes as possible, it might be a good idea to scan these directories first with Disk Inventory X or alternative for storage consumption transparency.