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Catalina : transfer 'Photos' , 'Music' , 'TV' to a new Mac

Feel a bit silly here as I'm sure this is online somewhere but can't find (or I'm just old and not properly getting the concept of Cloud).


Just bought a new MB Pro and want to transfer Photos 5.0, and also Music and TV (both of which were migrated from iTunes):


  1. Photos - assumed this was simply a matter of copying 'Photos Library' from home/Pictures. However, the timestamp of that file is ca. 1 week old, even though I opened earlier today and downloaded some photos from iCloud. Am I missing something ?


2. Music and TV - I've historically held all my music in a single location on Mac. With iTunes, the library would also be held there, but I can't seem to find it now. Where is the library file located ?


Thanks in advance ! CraigS



MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Nov 18, 2019 9:14 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 19, 2019 1:13 PM

For Photos use Photos > Preferences > General > Library Location (or Show In Finder) to reveal the location of the library.


The default paths for Music and TV libraries are ~/Music/Music and ~/Movies/TV respectively. Either may still be linked to data in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media or some other path in use before you updated to Catalina. In the long run the migration might be easier if you are able to reset the media folder and consolidate the library of each application. If that isn't possible copy the source media folders to the same paths on the new computer.


Migrating Podcasts and Books/Audiobooks is slightly less simple as these have ended up in hidden folders within ~/Library. Presumably copying following folders as they are will work:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

~/Library/Group Containers/243LU875E5.groups.com.apple.podcasts


tt2



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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 19, 2019 1:13 PM in response to craig_s

For Photos use Photos > Preferences > General > Library Location (or Show In Finder) to reveal the location of the library.


The default paths for Music and TV libraries are ~/Music/Music and ~/Movies/TV respectively. Either may still be linked to data in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media or some other path in use before you updated to Catalina. In the long run the migration might be easier if you are able to reset the media folder and consolidate the library of each application. If that isn't possible copy the source media folders to the same paths on the new computer.


Migrating Podcasts and Books/Audiobooks is slightly less simple as these have ended up in hidden folders within ~/Library. Presumably copying following folders as they are will work:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

~/Library/Group Containers/243LU875E5.groups.com.apple.podcasts


tt2



Nov 19, 2019 9:53 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks ! - really helpful.


On Photos, ref my original comment, it feels a bit strange that even though I've been updating the Photos library the timestamp doesn't change (confirmed the file size is increasing).


On media, I historically had this all consolidated in a single place for easy sharing between users, though of course the world has changed since then with home sharing etc.



Catalina : transfer 'Photos' , 'Music' , 'TV' to a new Mac

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