Sync Your Computers

Hey guys, this is Mac Heads1, and today I'm going to be teaching you how to sync two computers' settings and files between one another.

Okay, so all you need to do is, first of all, make sure on both your computers you have the same username. Okay, so um, this is my laptop, so I'm just going to check to make sure my username is correct. Okay, wait one second. So I just go into a terminal window by searching terminal or go up to Go, Utilities, Terminal.

Then I type first of all log in. You won't have to log in. Then I'll type um who am I and hit enter. So it says I'm Alex; that's my username. So now I'm going to go onto my desktop and type the exact same thing. Now I will point out that I'm already synchronizing my desktop with my home computer, so it should look pretty much exactly the same except for the background. I think it's the same, so yeah, let me just switch over to my desktop.

Okay, so my desktop screen is a little bit smaller than my laptop screen, so this might look a little dumb, but um, so I'm just going to go into Terminal. I'm just going to search terminal, and I'll log in because I have the same thing set up. So now if I type who am I on this computer, it says Alex as well. So my username is Alex on both my computers.

Okay, so now while I'm on my desktop, let's just assume my desktop has all my settings on it, and I want to synchronize it to my laptop. So I'm going to be showing you how to synchronize all your home directory, which has all your user settings and stuff, to another computer.

Sorry, got the lower resolution of my screen. First, I'll open up Terminal and I'll log in. Okay, so now I'll type um the following command; it's pretty easy: ifconfig. Now I'll hit enter. So now somewhere it'll say inet, and then your IP address right here, 192.168.1.117.

Another way to find your IP address is to go into System Preferences, then select um, Network. Then under Ethernet or whatever you're connected to, it'll say IP address. If you're on Wi-Fi, then it'll say another IP address, etc. So my IP address happens to be this.

So now what I want to do is I want to find out the IP address of my laptop. So I'll do the same exact thing that I did on my desktop to find this number on my laptop.

Okay, so it turns out that my desktop's username, or um, my desktop's IP address is 192.168.1.121. So now, and its username is also Alex. So now here's what I got to do on my laptop and on your desktop: you find out what your home directory is.

So to do that, just click on your desktop, go up to File, New Finder Window, then go to Macintosh HD, Users, and then here's all the folders and users. Here's my home directory Alex, so this is /Users/Alex. This is the path to my home directory.

So if I drag it in, I type /Users/Alex. So now I'm going to find out the path to my home directory on my desktop. Okay, so it also happened to be /Users/Alex. Okay, so now in order to synchronize these, I'm going to show you the command in a second.

Okay, so all you need to do is type rsync from the computer you want to get the data copy, the data from, to another computer you want. You type rsync space -av space, okay? Then drag in your home directory space and then type Alex or your username. In this case, it's Alex, at and then the IP address of the computer we want to sync it to, which is 192.168.1.121. Then you say colon.

Okay, then you say the path to your home directory. On my desktop, it's /Users/Alex. Then you want to hit enter. So now it's going to say building file list in a second, but first, it's going to ask you for your password.

Also, if this doesn't work, then um, there's another way to do it that's a little different. So I type my password; this is my password on the computer I'm syncing to, not on the computer I'm syncing from.

Okay, so now I'm just going to press Ctrl + C to cancel it because that'll take a while. When you're done, your home directory should be a carbon copy of your home directory on the computer you synced from to the home directory on the computer you synced to.

So that way you're copying exactly um, your home directory to another computer's home directory. So that's how to synchronize your home directory to another home directory.

To do it the opposite way, without going to your other computer and doing it the same way except to a different IP address is you would um, here's how you would do it. You do the same thing except you type rsync space -av space, and then the first thing I type is Alex@192.168.1.121: /Users/Alex.

Okay, so this is how I get this directory off this computer onto my computer. Um, I will point out that this will not work if you have um, some data on both of these computers. You want to copy all the data onto one computer and then synchronize, keep on synchronizing it to your other computer because this will not synchronize the data; it'll just wipe out the old data on the computer you're copying to and put the computer you're copying from onto it.

But um, this is the easiest way I know to copy your home folder in all your settings over to another computer. Um, I don't think it'll copy um, resource forks, but that's another complicated thing.

Um, also, if you don't understand, I'm just going to go over this one more time really quickly. So you have two computers: my laptop and my desktop. My desktop has all my information on it, and I'm trying to get all that information onto my laptop. So, how do I copy um... how do I copy um, the information from my desktop to my laptop? Well, first of all, what I do is I find the IP address of the computer I'm copying to.

Then I find the home path, the username, and password of the computer I'm copying to. I find the path of the home directory on the computer I'm copying from and the computer I'm copying to.

Then all I need to type is rsync space -av space the home directory of my... or the path to my home directory on my local computer that I'm copying from space my username@my IP address of my other computer colon space colon no space slash and then the path to my home directory on my other computer that I'm copying to.

Then you hit enter, and that should copy everything. So that's just an overview. Remember, when it does ask you for the password, um, you type your user on the computer you're copying to.

If you type sudo before the command, then it'll copy even um, system files that are in your home directory, which I don't really want to do because it's just a waste of space.

But that's basically how to copy your home directory. It will copy documents, items; it will not copy applications. So if you want to copy applications, you have to copy those over the network separately.

But um, this is how to copy over information from one computer to the other over your network. So thank you for watching Mac Heads1. Please subscribe to our videos; it supports us greatly, and goodbye!