Time Machine has been part of the Mac operating system since Mac OS X 10.5. When it comes to updates, Apple usually only improves the details. However, a major overhaul came with macOS 11 Big Sur. Since then, backups have also been possible on media formatted with the modern APFS file system instead of HFS+. Despite fundamentally new technology, users don’t notice much of it – Apple hasn’t changed the operation much.
In this article, we will mainly focus on the macOS 12 Monterey and macOS 13 Ventura systems. Both always create new backups on directly connected media in APFS format. We only mention the old HFS+ backups in passing. However, most of the above also works with older macOS versions. Up to macOS 12, some additional options are missing in macOS 13 Ventura, for example to control the frequency of backups. Since Apple has renovated System Preferences, we also provide the path that leads to the goal in Monterey and older.
- Time Machine is a reliable backup solution that can be optimized with on-board tools.
- Transferring data to new Macs is easy with Time Machine backups.
- Time Machine supports the APFS and HFS+ file systems, but works completely differently on the two.
- The backup can be done not only to hard drives connected by cable, but also to servers, NAS systems and other Macs.
- Tools like TimeMachineEditor, TheTimeMachineMechanic and BackupLoupe complement useful options.
You can choose to restore individual files and folders or entire Macs from Time Machine backups using Migration Assistant. The practical thing about it: If there is enough space, you also have access to several older versions of data that have already been changed or deleted. This opportunity to travel through time in your own data is what gave Time Machine its name.
