A network is great, but what if you just want to connect two Macs and transfer gobs of information as fast as you can? Using a gigabit Ethernet cable or a Mac with 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) or later wireless networking hardware, you can transfer data between two devices at gigabit per second rates, but you can do better than that.
Apple offers four built-in methods in macOS, none of which are obvious to set up. Each of them has different requirements, advantages, and trade-offs. Once connected, you use the same tools to transfer information between two Macs as you would if they were connected to a network:
SMB file sharing: In the Finder, choose Go > Connect to Server (Command-K) and click Browse. If the Mac doesn’t appear in followed by the other device’s network-assigned or self-assigned IP address and click Connect. (A self-assigned address means the computer couldn’t find a DHCP server, which assigns out addresses and provides a path to the Internet.)
