Does everyone still have Alias issues after every migration?

I recently moved from a MBP 2015 on OS10.15.7 to a M4 Max on OS15. After getting up to speed with this lovely new OS, after a few days of using my Mac in earnest, I began noticing that things weren't as perfect as they initially seemed. I work in music and have many sounds in lots of different places with many aliases used in/for many applications. When I tried using my once solid system, I found that all my aliases were broken, and I had thousands of them, from invoices to audio files to system files. all unlinked. i have just gone through every one of them and relinked them one by one. I searched online for an app that could help with this issue, but all the apps just found the aliases without a parent, but nothing more, And couldn't search the drive for files with identical or even similar names. I was wondering why Mac OS doesn't flag these issues directly after migration and why there isn't an app to help.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Feb 12, 2025 5:13 PM

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1 reply

Feb 14, 2025 10:23 AM in response to jonpen69

Might have simply been too large a leap from macOS 10.15.7 to macOS 15.3.1. You skipped from Catalina over Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma to land on 15.3.1 Sequoia.


Making such a large leap means that Apple would have had to handle 25,000 additional things during the migration to include all the incremental changes over 4 in between major upgrades. That is just asking for trouble.


There is a difference between Apple Aliases, Symbolic Links, Hard links and Firm links on macOS APFS. Depending on which way you created the aliases can impact their viability post upgrade.

https://www.lifewire.com/aliases-symbolic-links-hard-links-mac-2260189



I realize that the App Store / Software Update only provides the latest version. But you can go to this support page and download an older macOS version via the App Store (hidden links) so you can incrementally upgrade one major release at a time. That will help ensure that the migration goes more smoothly in the future.

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support





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Does everyone still have Alias issues after every migration?

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