I used migration assistant to transfer my old Mac to new Mac via peer to peer WiFi and nothing was transferred; what to do next?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Migration Assistant Help
iPad Pro, iPadOS 18
"How to troubleshoot Migration Assistant not transferring data via peer-to-peer Wi-Fi?: I used migration assistant to transfer my old Mac to new Mac via peer to peer WiFi and nothing was transferred; what to do next?"
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Migration Assist Not Working with Peer-to-Peer Network:
Why are you using peer-to-peer networking here? You might get faster speed, but it would not be a strait through connection (intended for an external drive with more reliably). You should back your old Mac up to an external hard drive (through Time Machine Backup), and then use Migration Assistant from there. Be certain you format it accordingly.
macOS uses Wi-Fi Direct plus Bonjour for discovery, and if either Mac has a firewall profile, VPN kernel extension, or leftover sharing service in a weird state, the session looks connected but never actually mounts the source volume.
I’ve seen this a lot after OS upgrades. Before retrying, sign out of iCloud on the old Mac, disable FileVault temporarily, turn off any VPN or security software, and reboot both machines. Then start Migration Assistant on the new Mac first, wait until it’s listening, and only then launch it on the old Mac. If it still transfers zero bytes, don’t keep retrying peer-to-peer, it almost never fixes itself.
Use a wired path instead, Thunderbolt cable, USB-C, or even plain Ethernet with a dongle. Migration Assistant is dramatically more reliable once there’s a real network interface involved, and that’s how Apple tests it internally, whether they admit it or not.
How to troubleshoot Migration Assistant not transferring data via peer-to-peer Wi-Fi?
