Migrate from Windows

Bringing your files, bookmarks and background over from a Windows installation

Migrate from Windows (Launchpad, or the button on the Welcome screen when there is a Windows disk in the computer) brings what you had on Windows over here. It is for the computer that now has both, and for the old disk plugged in over USB.

The disk. Every NTFS filesystem in the computer is listed with its name, size and whether it is removable. Choosing one opens it read-only and checks that Windows is really installed on it — an NTFS disk full of files is not a Windows installation, and it says so rather than showing you an empty list of accounts.
The account. The real accounts in C:\Users, without the ones Windows keeps for itself (Public, Default, the Defender sandbox account).
What to bring. Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Videos, each with how many files it holds and how much room they take — measured while you read, and giving up with an honest "at least" on a folder too big to count quickly. An empty folder is greyed out.
The copying, folder by folder, into the matching folders here.

Two things people look for afterwards and rarely find come too:

Browser bookmarks from Edge, Chrome, Brave and Opera, written to ~/Documents/Windows bookmarks.html — the format every browser imports (Firefox: Bookmarks → Manage Bookmarks → Import and Backup → Import Bookmarks from HTML).
The desktop background Windows was using, copied to ~/Pictures/Windows background.jpg.

If an exported bookmarks file or background already exists, the new one receives “(2)”, “(3)” and so on in its name. Existing files and links are preserved when copying the selected folders too.

Nothing on the Windows side is ever written to, and nothing here is overwritten: a file that already exists is kept as it is and counted as kept at the end. That means the assistant can be run twice without harm — the second run brings only what was not there the first time.

Windows must be shut down properly, not left hibernated or in fast startup: a hibernated Windows leaves its disk in a state Linux will only open read-only at best, and the assistant says it could not open the disk. Turn off fast startup in Windows, or shut it down with Shift held while clicking Shut down.