Managed Migration Assistant for macOS
Overview
Managed Migration Assistant streamlines Mac-to-Mac data migration during Setup Assistant, giving organizations control over what data transfers to a new Mac, without relying on users to make those decisions.
Migration Assistant selects the best transport option for migration based off of speed. Options include directly connecting over Wi-Fi, infrastructure Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and Thunderbolt. Migration Assistant also frequently checks to see if a faster option becomes available during migration.
You can customize and streamline the migration experience by specifying:
Which subfolders and files inside the user’s Home folder are required to migrate.
Which subfolders and files are excluded.
What user accounts aren’t offered for migration.
Whether system-level privacy settings are migrated.
Specified paths are always relative to the Home folder of the user in scope of migration. For example, to enforce the migration of the folder Work located at /Users/elana/Documents/Work/ you specify Documents/Work/ in the RequiredPaths array. Migration includes hidden folders and files, for example keys used for SSH, unless they are specifically excluded. You can also combine required and excluded paths. To exclude specific items within a required path, add an exclusion for that subfolder or file. For example, this allows the transfer of the Documents folder to be required, but specific subfolders or files within to be excluded. The user’s Library folder (~/Library) is always migrated. See Migration Assistant declarative configuration.
Note: Folder paths need a trailing forward slash (/).
The declarative device status channel provides status insights during the migration and additional details in a report after the transfer process completes. The report includes the date, time, amount of data transferred, and if any files could not be migrated—delivering the visibility organizations need for audit and troubleshooting purposes.
Requirements
macOS 15 or later on the source Mac.
macOS 26.4 or later on the new Mac.
The new Mac needs to be registered in Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager and assigned to a device management service.
A data connection between the two Mac computers. Unless Wi-Fi has been turned off on the source Mac, devices establish a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection.
Managed Migration Assistant is embedded into Setup Assistant and uses the following process:
The user opens Migration Assistant on their source Mac and initiates the migration process by entering their local administrator credentials.
The user sets up their new Mac while choosing to transfer their information from another Mac on the Transfer Your Data to This Mac pane.
The new Mac gets enrolled in a device management service using Automated Device Enrollment with the
await_device_configuredkey set totrue.Important: The Restore pane (skip key
Restore) can’t be hidden.The device management service provides required configurations, for example for Platform Single Sign On with Automated Device Enrollment, and the
com.apple.configuration.migration-assistant.settingsconfiguration.After the user account is created, Managed Migration Assistant guides the user through the process to transfer data from their Home folder of the source Mac.