Cable and adaptor requirements for 2015 iMac to 2025 Mac mini migration

Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 adapter and a thunderbolt cable.

click here ➜ Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter - Apple.com

The thunderbolt cable may be hard to get, as it needs to be an actual Thunderbolt data cable and not just Mini-display port cable, and Apple no longer sells those.

Your best bet, may be to do it over the network. Ethernet is recommended if you can connect both Macs to the router directly or using a Time Machine Backup.

click here ➜ Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

Migrating Mac to Mac over your local network is slow and has the greatest chance of failing.

Migrating Mac to Mac using Ethernet is OK, if both Mac's have Ethernet ports.

The best method, is to Migrate from your Time Machine backup.

see > Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

Note: If your old Mac's Time Machine backup drive has a USB-A cable..?

Then you will need a USB-C to USB-A adapter to connect the TM backup drive to the new M4 Mac mini.

If you do not have a Time Machine backup for the 2015 iMac..?

Get an external drive and make one or use an Ethernet cable for migration.

den.thed wrote:

Migrating Mac to Mac over your local network is slow and has the greatest chance of failing.

Migrating Mac to Mac using Ethernet is OK, if both Mac's have Ethernet ports.

The best method, is to Migrate from your Time Machine backup.

SoundVU,

Please simply follow the instructions in Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant and your migration will be fast, complete and trouble-free. Also, it is critical that you ensure the new MM had adequate storage. How to determine this is to simply check how much is stored on the 2015 iMac. For example if the iMac has 575GB of data stored on it then you need a 1 TB Mac mini. If you don't know how much is stored on the iMac, then look on YouTube or search how to learn how to do this, it's very very easy.

It should work, but will be much slower than over Thunderbolt and if there's a lot of data to transfer it can take a while. The old computer will be unusable while you do this. So make absolutely sure you don't need it while it's transferring.