Backing Up with Time Machine on macOS Tahoe
Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of macOS. It automatically backs up your personal data, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents. Having a backup allows you to recover files that you accidentally delete or restore your entire system if your Mac is lost or damaged.
How It Works
Time Machine keeps:
- Hourly backups for the past 24 hours.
- Daily backups for the past month.
- Weekly backups for all previous months.
The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk becomes full.
Setting Up Time Machine
- Connect an External Drive: Plug in a USB drive or Thunderbolt drive.
- Notification: You might see a notification asking if you want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine. If so, click Use as Backup Disk.
- Manual Setup:
- Open System Settings.
- Go to General > Time Machine.
- Click Add Backup Disk... and select your drive.
Managing Backups
Once set up, Time Machine runs automatically in the background.
Manual Backup
If you want to back up immediately (e.g., before installing a major update):
- Click the Time Machine icon (a clock with a counter-clockwise arrow) in the Menu Bar.
- Select Back Up Now.
Excluding Items
To save space, you can tell Time Machine to ignore certain folders (like your Downloads or large project builds).
- In System Settings > General > Time Machine, click Options....
- Click the + button to add folders to the exclusion list.
Restoring Files
The "Time Machine" interface allows you to travel back in time to retrieve lost files.
- Open the window or folder where the file used to be (e.g., your Documents folder).
- Click the Time Machine icon in the Menu Bar and select Browse Time Machine Backups.
- Your screen will transform into a 3D timeline.
- Timeline: Use the timeline on the right edge of the screen to jump to a specific date.
- Arrows: Use the up/down arrows on the screen to move back and forth through changes in that folder.
- Select the file you want to recover and click Restore. The file will be copied back to its original location.
For more on general system navigation, refer to Getting Started with macOS Tahoe.