I have always used Migration Assistant in the past when setting up a new Mac. How does Setup Assistant with a Time Machine backup differ from this and when should I use it instead?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.7
The setup assistant does not give you the option of opting out of specific types of content on the Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant does. If I am going from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac, I may choose to use Migration Assistant after the operating system installation so that I can exclude any third-party Intel applications from being installed.
If am upgrading from Sonoma to Sequoia and from an M2 Mac Mini Pro to an M4 Mac Mini Pro (as I have done), then I likely will use the Setup Assistant with the Sonoma TM backup for this purpose as there are no third-party applications that I choose to exclude.
In either case above, I start a fresh TM drive for the first backup of the new operating system and never let it use the previous TM backup drive again.
I beg to differ.
When I got my current M4 Pro MBP, I turned on, and when asked if I wanted to bring stuff I chose "from another mac, disk or Time Machine backup" - right there, before creating any user account on the new mac. I could choose what to bring, and I did choose only the user accounts, just as I would if running Migration Assistant later.
My aging memory, Luis.
New Mac…what is difference between Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant?
