# Moving to a new Mac

> Keep Hansard working on both computers after Migration Assistant or a restored backup copies it to a new one.

Migration Assistant copies your whole home folder to the new Mac, and Hansard
comes with it: the archive, the settings, the Personal Sync backup it writes
to, and the sign-ins the router and your agents use. That copy also carries the
old Mac's identity. If both Macs keep running Hansard as that one device, they
write the same backup and use the same sign-ins, and they get in each other's
way. A restored backup on a Windows or Linux computer brings the same copy.

- App: **Setup → This computer**
- CLI: `hansard device`

## What Hansard does on the copy

Hansard binds its identity to the computer's hardware. When it starts on other
hardware, it knows it is a copy. It keeps importing, and the archive and the
app keep working, but it waits before it does anything the other computer also
does:

- It uploads nothing to Personal Sync or your Teams.
- It doesn't start the account router, which would renew the copied sign-ins.
- It doesn't start remote hosting under the old computer's host identity.
- Teammates' agents cannot reach it.

The app shows the copy at the top of the window and asks once, in setup: is
this a new computer, or does it replace the old one?

A copy made before Hansard bound the identity to the hardware is found through
your Personal Sync backup instead. When the backup holds something this
computer didn't upload, Hansard holds in the same way.

## Keep both computers

Choose this when you'll keep using the old computer. The new one gets an
identity of its own: a new name, a new place in your Personal Sync backup, a
new remote-control identity, and a new member key in each of your Teams, which
the copied key introduces to teammates.

1. Open the alert at the top of the window, choose **Keep both**, and give this
   computer a name, for example the name of the model. Or run:

   ```sh
   hansard device adopt --new --name "New MacBook" --yes
   ```

   If Hansard didn't find the copy itself, add `--copied-at` with the last time
   the old computer ran Hansard.

2. Pair again any device you paired for remote control with the old computer.

3. On the old computer, update Hansard before you open it, and follow
   [Sign in again on the old computer](https://www.hansard.dev/sync/new-computer/#sign-in-again-on-the-old-computer).

Conversations that were last active before the copy stay the old computer's.
They keep its name in the app, and the new computer never uploads them as its
own. Conversations that ran on the new computer after the copy, including old
conversations you continued there, take the new computer's name.

The new computer leaves a note in your backup with what it uploaded under the
old identity. When the old computer next starts Hansard, it finds that note,
takes those uploads as its own, and carries on as before.

## Sign in again on the old computer

OpenAI and Anthropic renew a sign-in by replacing it. Once the new computer has
renewed a copied sign-in, the old computer's copy is used up, and presenting it
can sign you out on both computers.

When the old computer starts the updated Hansard, it parks Hansard's own copies
of those sign-ins, in the router and in the logins Hansard saved for your
accounts, and asks you to sign in to each again in **Accounts**. To keep the
sign-ins on the old computer instead and sign in again on the new one, add
`--sign-ins leave` to `hansard device adopt --new`. Hansard never changes the
sign-ins that Codex, Claude Code, and other agents keep for themselves.

> **Before you use Codex or Claude Code on the old computer:** Sign out of each one on that computer only, without revoking the sign-in, and
> sign in again. For Codex, move `~/.codex/auth.json` aside and run
> `codex login`. For Claude Code on macOS, delete the "Claude Code-credentials"
> item in Keychain Access, then start `claude` and sign in. Do this before you
> run them; a run with the old sign-in can sign out the new computer too.

To see the parked sign-ins, or to put them back if you chose the wrong
computer:

```sh
hansard device sign-ins
hansard device sign-ins --restore
```

## Replace the old computer

Choose this when the new computer takes over and the old one stops running
Hansard. The new computer keeps the identity and continues the backup from
where the old one left it. Open the alert at the top of the window and choose
**Replace** followed by the old computer's name, or run:

```sh
hansard device adopt --replace --yes
```

Then quit Hansard on the old computer, or erase it. If it starts Hansard again,
it finds that another computer continued its backup and waits until you choose
there too.

## Check where things stand

```sh
hansard device status
```

`status` names this computer, says whether it is a copy, and lists the copied
history it keeps for another computer and any sign-ins parked for a fresh
sign-in.

> **An unfinished change:** If the change stops part way, for example without a network connection,
> run the same command again. It finishes with the same new identity, and
> uploads wait until it does.