Today I had to move my iPhone-sync from my iMac to my MacBook Air and I didn’t want to loose any data (especially app-data like save games).I mean: no complete re-sync or whatever. To have a manual for later when I have to move everything back to my iMac and for everyone else who is interested in moving the sync to a new computer, I thought it would be good to do a short write up.

But beware: I use mobileme to sync calendars and contacts thus I cannot say anything about moving this kind of sync but I guess the easiest thing would be to backup the data on computer 1 (via the backup-functionality in iCal and Address Book), move the backup to computer 2 and use this data.

Now for the rest: If a folder is not yet existent on computer 2, create it. Paths have to be identically of course. Beware! This manual is radical and copies even all iTunes-setting. It’s not optimized, it’s just the way to duplicate the library from one computer to another in a way that iPhone-sync keeps intact. If any problems occur - don’t say it’s my fault, I’m just explaining what worked for me.

  1. Do a last sync of your iPhone
  2. If the resolution of the screen of Computer 1 is higher than that of Computer 2, resize on Computer 1 the iTunes to a size that it will fit on the screen of Computer 2 (make it small…)
  3. Close iTunes on both computers
  4. Copy the content of your iTunes-folder from computer 1 to computer 2 (that would be usually ~/Music/iTunes) and replace everything. That's the step to keep even your ratings, play counts and everything. Afaik this data is saved in "iTunes Music Library.xml", "iTunes Library", "iTunes Library Extras.itdb", "iTunes Library Genius.itdb"
  5. Copy the content of ~/Library/Mobile Device/ to Computer 2 (provision profiles etc)
  6. Copy the content of ~/Library/MobilSafari to Computer 2 (Bookmarks)
  7. Copy the content of ~/Library/Application Support/Mobile Sync (Backup of your old iPhone) to Computer 2
  8. Copy the content of ~/Library/iTunes to Computer 2
  9. Copy from ~/Library/Preferences everything what has iTunes in it file name to Computer 2

Open iTunes on Computer 2 and you will find your library there w/ everything as you did on Computer 1. Connect your iPhone and everything should work. The only issue I had was that iTunes wanted to sync every app but I canceled the first sync and de-selected every app I did not want to sync and then synced my iPhone. Worked great for me.

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