everyday mac tools

Files missing after Migration Assistant: where they usually are

· 7 min read

Migration Assistant copies; it does not move. Your files are still on the old Mac, or in the backup you migrated from, so nothing is lost while that stays untouched. On the new Mac, missing files are usually in one of four places: a second user account created during the transfer, iCloud Drive, a category that was not selected, or simply not yet in the Spotlight index. Check them in that order before running a second migration.

Leave the old Mac exactly as it is

Until the new Mac checks out, do not erase, sell or trade in the old one, and do not reuse the Time Machine drive you migrated from. Either one is the complete copy of what you had. If you have already erased the old Mac, the backup is now the only copy: unplug it and keep it somewhere safe until you are finished.

A second account holding your files

This is the most common cause, and the most alarming to look at. If you created a user account while setting up the new Mac and then migrated an account with the same name, Migration Assistant asks what to do. Choosing to keep both creates a second account with a different name, and everything you moved goes into that one, not the one you are logged in to.

To check:

  1. Open System Settings, Users & Groups, and look at the list. Two accounts that are both you is the giveaway.
  2. In Finder, choose Go, Go to Folder, type /Users and press Return. Each account has a home folder there. Folders you cannot open from your account show a small red badge.
  3. Log out and log in to the other account. If your Desktop, Documents and mail are there, you have found everything.

Then decide which account to keep. Often the migrated one is the better home, since it has your settings, apps and history. To move a handful of files across, use the Shared folder: from the account that has them, copy them into /Users/Shared, then log in to the other account and move them out. Delete the extra account only once everything is where you want it. When you do, Users & Groups offers to save its home folder as a disk image, which is a sensible safety net.

iCloud Drive files that look missing

If Desktop & Documents Folders was turned on for the old Mac, those files live in iCloud Drive rather than in the migration itself. On the new Mac they appear once you are signed in to the same Apple Account with the same option on: System Settings, your name, iCloud, iCloud Drive, then Desktop & Documents Folders.

Even then, files can show a cloud icon with no local copy. That is Optimize Mac Storage keeping them in iCloud until you open them. They are not missing; each one downloads when opened, or you can Control-click a folder and choose Download Now to bring the whole folder down. Optimize Mac Storage in iCloud explains when and why that happens.

There is one more twist. If the option was on for the old Mac but is off on the new one, your Desktop and Documents sit in iCloud Drive as folders named Desktop and Documents, while the Desktop and Documents in your home folder look empty. Click iCloud Drive in the Finder sidebar and look there.

Something was left unselected

Migration Assistant shows a list of what to transfer: applications, each user account (with its Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures and other folders listed separately), other files and folders, and computer and network settings. Anything unchecked stays behind.

The easy one to miss is other files and folders. It covers things stored outside a user’s home folder, such as folders created at the top level of the startup disk. Files that lived on an external drive or a second partition were never part of the migration at all.

To fetch what was left, copying by hand is usually simplest: connect the backup drive, or turn on file sharing on the old Mac, and drag across what is missing. Running Migration Assistant a second time works too, but it will raise the same-name account question again, and answering it the other way is how a second account appears in the first place.

Spotlight has not caught up yet

A freshly migrated Mac spends its first hours indexing everything it was given. Until that finishes, Spotlight and Finder searches return partial results, which looks exactly like missing files. The files are there; the index is not.

Browse to the folder directly instead of searching, or use Terminal, which reads the disk rather than the index:

find ~ -iname "*budget*" 2>/dev/null

Replace budget with part of the file’s name. To look in every account at once, put sudo in front and change ~ to /Users. Terminal may also need Full Disk Access, in System Settings, Privacy & Security, to see into some protected folders. Spotlight cannot find a file you know exists covers the index itself if searches are still incomplete after a day.

Everywhere is useful here because it does not depend on the Spotlight index. It catalogs every file on the Mac once, then answers as you type; on an older Intel Mac with six million files, the first catalog took 31 seconds, and searching works before it finishes. It asks for Full Disk Access so it can see everything, and if you refuse, it says plainly which folders it cannot reach. Command-D finds every other copy of the selected file, which helps when the migration and iCloud have left two versions of the same document. It searches names and paths, not what is inside files, and it is free for a day with nothing held back.

Photos, mail and apps that seem empty

  • Photos. Hold Option while opening Photos to choose which library to open. The migrated library may simply not be the one Photos picked. With iCloud Photos, full-size originals can take a long time to download.
  • Mail. The first launch after a migration imports and re-indexes your mail, which can take a while for a large mailbox. Let it finish before judging.
  • Apps. Some apps need you to sign in or enter a license key again on a new Mac. Moving apps to a new Mac without the original keys covers finding them.

Before you finally let the old Mac go, compare the two. Run du -sh ~/Desktop ~/Documents ~/Pictures ~/Downloads in Terminal on each Mac. The sizes should be close; folders synced with iCloud can look smaller on the new Mac until their files download. Migration Assistant: what it moves, what it quietly leaves lists what never transfers at all.

Questions

Did Migration Assistant delete anything from my old Mac? No. It copies from the old Mac, or from a backup, and leaves the source unchanged.

What is the Relocated Items folder on my Desktop? That comes from a macOS upgrade rather than a migration. Files in system locations that the upgrade needed to replace are moved to /Users/Shared/Relocated Items, with a shortcut on the Desktop. Look through it, keep anything you recognize, and if nothing in it is yours, it is safe to delete.

Should I just run Migration Assistant again? Only for a whole category you forgot. For a few folders, copying by hand is quicker and avoids the account question entirely.