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Restoring a whole Mac

Bring everything back to a new or wiped Mac, with an external drive and Migration Assistant, or by signing in and using it after ten minutes.

macOS is already on a new Mac. Yester brings back everything else — apps, settings, documents, photos, mail — the way Migration Assistant does from a Time Machine disk.

Before you start

You need your Yester sign-in and the recovery key for the Mac you’re restoring. Without the key the backup can’t be opened by anyone; see Security and the recovery key. If you let Yester keep a copy in your iCloud Keychain, signing in to iCloud on the new Mac is enough.

Install Yester on the new Mac, sign in, and choose Restore this Mac from a backup. Yester lists the Macs in your account with their last backup time. Pick the Mac, pick the moment — the latest backup, or an earlier one from before something went wrong — and choose what to bring back. Then take one of two routes.

Route A: with an external drive

Best for a big restore on a slow connection, or when you want the Mac exactly as it was, user accounts and all.

  1. Plug in an empty external drive (it will be erased). Yester writes your backup to it in the layout Migration Assistant understands: Users, Applications, Library and the rest.
  2. Yester hands over to Migration Assistant, which brings everything in the way it would from a Time Machine disk.

Older files in archival storage are fetched first; Yester tells you how long that will take.

Route B: no drive, just sign in

Best when you want to get going now.

  1. Yester restores your settings, documents and mail first. After about ten minutes the Mac is ready to use.
  2. Photos, media and apps keep arriving in the background. Files that haven’t arrived yet show a cloud badge; open one and it jumps the queue.
  3. Apps are reinstalled from the list Yester saved. Some will ask you to sign in again — Yester brings back apps and their data, not their passwords.

It’s safe to sleep, restart or move to different Wi-Fi during a restore; Yester picks up where it left off. Your history comes too: every earlier version stays available on the new Mac, and the new Mac takes over the old one’s subscription line and backup history.

Going back to before something went wrong

Choose An earlier moment… when picking the backup to restore from. Use it after malware, a bad update, or a change you regret — the versions from before it happened are untouched, because nothing on your Mac can delete a backup.