When upgrading, what does migrating and synchronization mean?

Upgrading Mac version 1.2.4 to 1.3.2

I open the new version, it shows all the vaults. I then click on a vault and a message appears saying "This vault needs to be migrated to a newer format. Please make sure synchronization has finished before migrating"
It also has a check box with the phrase “Yes, I’ve made sure the synchronization has finished”

How do I synchronize my old vaults?

I am using this on a MacOS High Sierra Version 10.13.3

Cryptomator’s main use case is to store vaults inside a cloud storage. Typically, you’d create a vault inside a directory that automatically synchronizes with a cloud. If you haven’t done that, you don’t have to worry about synchronization. But since Cryptomator is not doing any cloud synchronization at all, we’ve built in this notice.

In your case, upgrading form 1.2.4 to 1.3.2 only upgrades the masterkey format (see GitHub Issue 521). So synchronization wouldn’t be that important because it affects only one file. But we had vault upgrades in the past that also needed to upgrade all files.