Wire or Wireless Data Transfer

Question

Wire or Wireless Data Transfer

Hi community, so I was erasing my Mac mini from it's data because it wasn't portable, and so, I was going to return it. I then had a few files, not too much since I only had it for like a month. I wanted to transfer those files into my new M4 MacBook Air, and so, like other YouTubers transferring files, I connected a wire in both the devices. Now, I went into the input and found nothing, and I searched Reddit for like an hour, but found absolutely nothing on Reddit. And so, I quit. I could have put it in a drive, . Can you tell me how to do this wired or wireless transfer? Those files are very important, as they are for my content creation work.

Thanks Community for helping.

[Edited by Moderator]

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 26.3

Posted on Apr 11, 2026 5:08 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

MrHoffman

Level 10

165,477 points

Apr 11, 2026 6:20 AM in response to rj_appleglazer

If your Mac mini was erased, there are no files to transfer.

If the Mac mini was not erased, then you can use the previous suggestions, as well as target disk mode and file shares.

Your cabling seems like you were looking for target disk mode, and that works like this:

Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode - Apple Support

File shares:

Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support

Universal Clipboard (and related):

Use Universal Clipboard to copy and paste between your Apple devices - Apple Support

AirDrop doesn’t require a code particularly for transfers within the same Apple Account, though other Mac setup details such as two-factor authentication and iCloud Keychain do.

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Answer 2

Urquhart1244

Level 10

151,406 points

Apr 11, 2026 5:24 AM in response to rj_appleglazer

You can transfer files via USB thumb drive, external hard disk, or shared network folder or volume, or AirDrop, or iCloud Drive, or other online temporary cloud storage. The optimal choice may depend on the total size in GB and number of items to copy.

AirDrop is awesome, but I never tried it for a very large number of files. Both computers should connect to the same home network, either wired or wireless (or a mix).

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Answer 3

Apr 11, 2026 5:30 AM in response to Urquhart1244

Yeah, but the thing was that I couldn't connect both of them because they required a code from the Air. I couldn't put it into the Mac mini for AirDrop. But thanks for the info, it helped a lot.

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