Migrate OpenClaw to a New Machine

Step 1 — Export Your Config from the Old Machine

All OpenClaw settings live in a single JSON file. Find it and copy it to a safe location (USB drive, cloud storage, or transfer directly via SSH/SCP).

Find the config file

openclaw config path

Copy the entire .openclaw/ directory, which includes:

# Backup to a folder on your desktop
cp -r ~/.openclaw ~/Desktop/openclaw-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d)

# Or show exact path
echo ~/.openclaw

# Copy .openclaw folder
xcopy "%USERPROFILE%\.openclaw" "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\openclaw-backup" /E /I

Step 2 — Install OpenClaw on the New Machine

Install OpenClaw fresh on the target machine. Do not configure it yet — you will overwrite the config in Step 3.

npm install -g openclaw@latest

# Verify install
openclaw --version

If you run into Windows-specific install errors, see the Windows npm install guide.

Step 3 — Import Config to the New Machine

Copy your backed-up openclaw.json to the correct location on the new machine.

# Create the .openclaw directory if it doesn't exist
mkdir -p ~/.openclaw

# Copy your backup config
cp /path/to/backup/openclaw.json ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json

# Verify it loaded
openclaw config get gateway.auth.token

# Create the directory if needed
mkdir "%USERPROFILE%\.openclaw"

# Copy the config
copy "D:\openclaw-backup\openclaw.json" "%USERPROFILE%\.openclaw\openclaw.json"

Step 4 — Reinstall Skills and Plugins

Skills (plugins) are installed per-machine and are not transferred via the config file. You need to reinstall them on the new machine.

# Run this on the OLD machine to see what you had
clawhub list --installed

# Install each skill you need, for example:
clawhub install obsidian-cli
clawhub install proactive-agent
clawhub install nano-banana-pro

# Or use the search to find what you need
clawhub search <skill-name>

Browse the full Skills Registry to find and reinstall your skills.

Step 5 — Re-authenticate and Verify

Device tokens are machine-specific and cannot be transferred. On the new machine, you need to start fresh with device authentication.

# Start the gateway
openclaw gateway start

# Check status
openclaw gateway status

# Open Control UI in a fresh browser window to re-authenticate
# (use Incognito for a clean device token handshake)

openclaw doctor

Special Cases

Migrating to a different OS

Your openclaw.json is cross-platform — the same file works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, any absolute paths in your config (e.g. for local file access) will need to be updated to match the new OS path format.

Migrating just the config, keeping the old machine

If you want to run OpenClaw on two machines simultaneously, each machine gets its own device token. Both can share the same gateway.auth.token and LLM provider keys — just copy the config and start the gateway on each machine independently.

Config on a shared drive or NAS