Poor Migration Experience Transferring to a New Mac

Bug Reports
1

Note:
I'm transferring my presets to a new machine and for some reason the snap areas don't seem to export. My BTT setup has 12 Default presets for some god-forsaken reason. I went through all of those and deleted the ones that didn't have any triggers or snap areas, I found two presets which had everything I needed. Why BTT has other raw presets is beyond me.

I merged all the triggers and snap areas into one and it works on the old machine, but when exported and imported into the new machine the snap areas are missing. The snap area settings shortcut does not work either.

This is my work laptop and will be locked tomorrow, but BTT's mediocre support of exporting configs have left me stranded.

Describe the bug
Exporting presets should export everything and import everything in the new setup.

Affected input device (e.g. MacBook Trackpad, Magic Mouse/Trackpad, Touch Bar, etc.):

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem. (You can just paste or drag them here)

Device information:

  • Type of Mac:
    • Old: MBP i7 2019
    • New: MBP M3 2023
  • macOS version: Sonoma 14.3.1 on both
  • BetterTouchTool version: (please post the exact version - not just "the latest one") 4.410

Additional information (e.g. crash logs, related issues, etc.):

2

If you want to do a full export just copy the ~/Library/Application Support/BetterTouchTool folder to your new machine

However snap areas are bound to a specific display setup, thus it is unlikely they will work on a different machine.

3

This has worked in the past, since my monitor and dock are the same. I've also moved configs between machines (personal to work) and it was ok with the same monitor, but now it's broken.

If you want to do a full export just copy the ~/Library/Application Support/BetterTouchTool folder to your new machine

If this is the recommended way, why is this not the default option? i.e. zip the dir and export it.

4

Usually exporting your preset is the recommended way but most people don't have 12 presets :wink:

5

I didn't create those? The app has been creating those on it's own, it's annoying.

6

Did you use the experimental dropbox/icloud sync? I can imagine this could cause duplicate presets.

However apart from that, BTT doesn't create presets on its own. (Only when importing a preset or when adding one manually)

7

Yes, that was on, so that created those presets. Should turn that off!

  • However, migrating by copying the entire folder also did not work.
  • I have an old backup from 2022, which when imported to the new machine enables snapping zones, but my setup evolved since then and I can't get to the new snap areas.

I gave up on migrating and tried to create new ones and I got an error:

Sorry, BetterSnapTool was unable to get the dimensions of the currently active window. Please make sure the window that you want to use as template is currently active. If your problem persists you can contact me at https://www.folivora.ai or via mail: andreas@folivora.ai

Oh man!

8

Thanks to my habits, I found a backup of btt when I last made the change, and imported it to my personal laptop. Used that on my new machine and everything works. The current backups are wonky and broken.

9

How did you create your working backup? (there haven’t been changes to the export functionality in quite a while, it usually works just fine - however the experimental dropbox sync might have messed things up)

10

The working backup was the whole directory tarball. It was created many versions ago I believe. But using that everything works as expected.