Move from Intel to M1 with TimeMachine

Question

I'm thinking about switching to new Mac with ARM in next months. I usually backup with TimeMachine my Mac. 3 years ago I moved from MacBook Air to MacBook Pro really smoothly using backup from TimeMachine. I'm now asking if it will be as easy as last time doing it from an x86 Mac to a ARM one. For example all binaries files in my mac will not work on the new one, are they copied anyway? I know that Rosetta exists and it can run x86 binaries, but I definitely prefer pure ARM install of software instead of have the Mac full of old binaries. Does Time Machine copy smartly the applications or I need to do it manually? Is there a way to copy only the data and not the executable files?

Suppose that I have to transfer all the x86 executable files. Is there a script to clean the Mac from unnecessary files? This should be in another question, but since is quite related to what I'm talking about: how can I clean my Mac from old and uninstalled application data? My Library folder is full of files created by applications that I have uninstalled years ago (some of them were uninstalled on the old mac and Time Machine brought their data on the new Mac) and I want to clean up it; I guess that this problem affects also other folders.

Thank you!

Answer 1

When you start up your new Mac for the first time, it will ask you if you want to copy files, settings and apps over from another Mac, or from a TM backup.

If you do this, everything should be fine. However, if you want to exclude Applications, you can do this as part of the process.