I had a dozen or so windows with some tabs open in Finder for a long time. Today I find out it's randomly lost them all. Is there a way to restore the open windows/tabs using a Time Machine backup? Thanks! EDIT: I tried restoring "com.apple.finder.plist" from /Users/[User]/Library/Preferences but it doesn't work. I don't think the system is letting me do this properly while Finder is running. Is there a way to keep it killed while I swap the file? Or how could I do this from recovery? Does this file even store the open folders?

I have an APFS-formatted drive with a year or so of Time Machine backup from my old machine. I now got a new Mac. When setting it up, I did not migrate any system files or users, instead copying user files manually for a fresh start. So in Time Machine's eyes it's a brand-new machine. Now I should, of course, be able to inherit/associate the old backups to the new machine (as plenty of threads on this site discuss). I was wondering, though, when told to inherit, will Time Machine deduplicate its data, i.e., automatically detect files that are the same and only use new space for those that have changed, or will it create an entirely new copy of all data? Because if the latter is true, then what's the point of inheriting? I could just create a new APFS volume to back up my new Mac and leave the other volume untouched. In other words, will I save any space on the backup drive if I inherit the old Time Machine backups? Or are there any other possible benefits?

I have a 2 TB external SSD backup drive using Time Machine with my iMac. It worked great for 6 years, doing regular backups of my iMac hard drive. Suddenly it has stopped doing backups, and, in fact, the disk is now "read only". I cannot even delete folders or any files from the external drive. I noticed that 1.83 TB are used on the drive, with just 166.03 GB "available". I would like to not lose the files that I have backed up over these years, if possible. Is there any way that I can delete folders from this problematic external drive so that more space is available, possibly allowing me to access everything on the drive? Or is it necessary to erase everything on the drive and start over?

One of my TM external drives (D1) has just failed. I purchased a new one (D2) and, as recommended, began a new TM history on it. However, I would like to keep the history of D1. This is not in order to use it with TM (because I am wary that it could be corrupted), but I would like to have individual access to old versions of my files on D1, even with a rudimentary tool. What I have done so far: I used a file search tool (Find Any File) and looked for earlier versions of one of my files on D1. After a long time (15 min) I could access and read several older versions, which would be good enough for my needs. Question is: D1 could fail anytime, so I want to move the whole TM history to a partition on D2 (which is large enough). I have read that there are issues with hard links, this is where my skills stop. ps. This is *not* a question about transferring a TM from one drive to another; the question has been addressed and the answers I read are negative.

I use a Synology NAS to backup my family's MacBooks. Two are still working fine, but one of them was unable to make a backup for about a week. Because the other two MacBooks are still fine I am pretty sure that the issue is not related to the recent MacOS update nor to the recent Synology firmware update. The log file has repeating sections like the following:

2021-11-05 10:29:52: TMPowerState: 2
2021-11-05 10:30:22: TMPowerState: 2
2021-11-05 10:30:22: Not prioritizing backups with priority errors. lockState=0
2021-11-05 10:30:22: Starting automatic backup
2021-11-05 10:30:22: Attempting to mount 'smb://[USERNAME]@Synology._smb._tcp.local./time-machine'
2021-11-05 10:30:26: Mounted 'smb://[USERNAME]@Synology._smb._tcp.local./time-machine' at '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine' (111,02 GB of 805,31 GB available)
2021-11-05 10:30:26: Initial network volume parameters for 'time-machine' {disablePrimaryReconnect: 0, disableSecondaryReconnect: 0, reconnectTimeOut: 60, QoS: 0x0, attributes: 0x1C}
2021-11-05 10:30:26: Configured network volume parameters for 'time-machine' {disablePrimaryReconnect: 0, disableSecondaryReconnect: 0, reconnectTimeOut: 30, QoS: 0x20, attributes: 0x1C}
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Failed to delete 'file:///Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine/DCC98B45-7855-4FAA-B130-5FC56A017ED3.purgeable.sparsebundle/', error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "“DCC98B45-7855-4FAA-B130-5FC56A017ED3.purgeable.sparsebundle” couldn’t be removed." UserInfo={NSUserStringVariant=(
Remove :     Remove
), NSFilePa: "No such file or directory"}}
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Invalid mountpoint '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine' - no volume mounted at this path
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', Disk Management error: {
Action =:     Action = Unmount;
Target =:     Target = "file:///Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine/";
} : }
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', error: Error Domain=com.apple.diskmanagement Code=0 "No error" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=No error, NSLocalizedDescription=Kein Fehler.}
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Waiting 60 seconds and trying again.
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Cancelling backup because volume '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine' was unmounted.
2021-11-05 10:31:03: Requested backup cancellation or termination
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Backup cancelled (22: BACKUP_CANCELED)
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', Disk Management error: {
Action =:     Action = Unmount;
Target =:     Target = "file:///Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine/";
} : }
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine', error: Error Domain=com.apple.diskmanagement Code=0 "No error" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=No error, NSLocalizedDescription=Kein Fehler.}
2021-11-05 10:31:04: Cleared pending cancellation request

Interesting detail: The folder that failed to unmount (/Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66/time-machine in this example) is always different on each try. And it is always created at the time the backup attempt started. And it always contains only one empty folder called time-machine:

-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B  5 Nov 10:30 3C582361-50A6-47F2-947C-86A99A2B1A66

What I tried so far: * Run hard disk tests on the Synology NAS (all HDDs are fine) * Disabled and enabled Time Machine * Run Disk Utility – First Aid on all disks * Manually deleted all existing folders in /Volumes/.timemachine/Synology._smb._tcp.local./ * Told Time Machine to remove the existing backup and start from scratch * Rebooted the Mac a couple of times None of that made a difference. Any idea how to fix this issue?

Somehow I deleted the contents of the Applications folder under my username (User/Applications). However, when I typed "Applications" into Spotlight, it gave me a folder called Applications. How can I restore those applications using the Time Machine?

I've recently come across an issue with my external HDD (2TB, LaCiE) drive which is formatted with APFS. I have three volumes under a 2TB container which are all APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted). 1. When plugging in the drive, I see the following error for each of my volumes: 2. When trying to recover with Disk Drill, which has worked in the past, I only see "Updating disk list..." 3. When usig libfsapfs 's fsapfsinfo, tool, I see the following error:

fsapfsinfo 20210424

Apple File System (APFS) information:

File system hierarchy:
Unable to print file system hierarchy.
libfsapfs_internal_volume_unlock: invalid volume - missing key bag.
libfsapfs_volume_unlock: unable to unlock volume.
info_handle_get_volume_by_index: unable to unlock volume.
info_handle_file_system_hierarchy_fprint: unable to retrieve volume: 0.

Any and all help would be appreciated! Thanks :~)

I'm trying to find a way to create Time Machine backups that I can still browse in the future from machines that are not the one that created the backup (or from other users). My main issue it seems is with permissions, but I couldn't find any good guidance online valid for the way TM works since the switch to APFS. I recently got a new mac and noticed that backups created on my old MacBook are not accessible (red icon indicating lack of permissions). My old MacBook was running Ventura (still an intel machine from 2017). The external drive is APFS formatted. How can I make sure when creating backups on an APFS TM volume that I can browse them in the future. *A few details for context:* I did not use Migration Assistant to transfer the information over from the Time Machine volume to my new MacBook. Every once in a while I like to start fresh and use the move to a new machine as a welcome opportunity to do a spring-cleaning, reviewing all my settings and data, manually recreate settings, discard stuff that I don't use anymore etc. That also means moving my files first to in a separate "Transferred" folder and then step by step integrating them back into Documents, Pictures, Music, etc. So that's what I did this time. I set up my new MacBook without any migrating. But when it came to accessing the files from the backup I noticed that since I'm on a new machine, new user, I don't have permissions for those files. And because it's the new APFS TM volume, which is read-only for normal humans, I can't change permissions either. The workaround I did was to use Migration Assistant to create a new user on my new machine, then move all files I wanted from that user to the "Shared" folder, from there move them to the new main user that I had already set up, and then delete the migrated user (there's unfortunately no way to use Migration Assistant for only moving files, it always forces you to copy the library folder over). Now I'm hoping to either create backups in such a way that I can access them from any machine/user or find an easy way of accessing them a posteriori. The use case is not necessarily migrating to a new machine (there are workarounds like the one described above), but rather the opportunity to occasionally browse past disks, whether to retrieve an old file, or just for nostalgic purposes, how did I organize my files 10 years ago?, what programs did I use?, what was I working on?, etc. I still have old backups from 2008 (all contained in sparsebundles) that I occasionally access. I always encrypt my external hard drives with a password, so in terms of data safety, I don't need the additional layer of protection with permissions (which can be circumvented by admin accounts anyways). Any suggestions of how to make TM backups nowadays that will remain accessible from any machine/user? I don't need to be able to "browse" them through time machine's interface (which hasn't worked reliably for very old backups anyways). In fact I would prefer to have the option access them as I used to through the Finder's folder structure – as long as I have permissions to do so.

Today I tried to do a Time Machine backup to an external disk. I got an error message saying the backup failed because a file "could not be backed up". File name was /private/var/root/Library/Logs/Bluetooth/bluetoothd-hci-2025-03-13_19-23-02.pklg This file didn't seem to be essential, so I deleted the file and tried again. Got another error message of the same type complaining about another file. Lather, rinse, repeat a few more times and I got suspicious. Initially I assumed the error was saying the source file could not be read. I checked the files, and I could open them in a text editor. Permissions also didn't look odd. What's going on? Edit: The SSD is a Crucial X9 Pro. I found an Amazon review that contains this gem: > Crucial Support told me that APFS (case-sensitive) often does this with this device, but nowhere in their documentation nor sales literature do they state this

I have a not-so-old WD external partitioned drive that was being used for Time Machine backups & holding older files on the other partition. During the last Time Machine backup it didn't complete and just kept spinning its wheels. I cancelled the backup. I'm now unable to get it to completely mount - Time Machine side won't mount. Ive tried Disk Drill app with no luck - wouldn't mount either. Is there anything I can try using macOS to make it mount & access data? I also have this from latest disk utility first aid session: I'm pretty sure it's formatted macOS journaled. I'd like to be able to use the drive for other purposes if not too big of risk of failing again if it can be repaired. But without know what the issue is - not sure what to do! Thanks for any help. Here's the format info: Sooo, wanted to re-format before recycling or other experiments. Looks like failure?? And finally , then tried first aid again.

How do I set Time Machine to eject my external Time Machine backup drive automatically after each backup?

I have a Samba shared folder set up via an OpenWrt router. One sub-folder is currently used to perform an encrypted backup of a Linux machine with Déjà Dup. I created another sub-folder which I intend to use for backing up a Mac laptop. These docs suggest that I'll need to format the disk in order to make a backup with time machine. Does Time Machine really only backup if it can format the disk all for itself? Or can it backup to one folder, or, failing that, its own partition?

I am trying to recover chats from WhatsApp on Mac, due to a problem with my iCloud backup. I have Time Machine backups and I am trying to find where WhatsApp stores my chats in my Library. I have looked at a previous question (Deleting WhatsApp chat history from work Mac ), but this was before WhatsApp no longer required a continuous internet connection. * Is it possible to extract my chat history from my Time Machine backup, i.e. does WhatsApp exclude chat history from Time Machine backups? * For future reference, where can I find the WhatsApp chat history, if possible, in my Library on my Mac?

After changing to a new external USB hdd for *Time Machine* my previous external USB drive used for *Time Machine* (almost) disappeared. My old drive is a *Western Digital, My Passport 25E3 for Mac* (1-tb). It is **not** recognized in: - Disk Utility - (About This Mac) --> (Storage) - **/Volumes$**ls -l However, I can see the old *Time Machine* drive here: (*About This Mac*) --> (*System Report*) --> (*USB*) --> (*USB 3.0 Bus*) -> **My Passport 25E3** I've rebooted several times and used different cables. What can I do to reformat that old *Time Machine* drive and mount it as just a normal external drive?

we’re just migrating my wife’s MacBook Pro to a new one, both most recent macOS versions via a TimeMachine backup. In the process all files are selected, Migration Assistenten on the new mac runs through smoothly without any errors. Except that it’s a lot faster than expected, and faster than it first estimates to be. We’re roughly talking about 200 Gb of data, it first estimates to take around 1:30 (h:min), but then finishes after just a couple of minutes. After rebooting the Pictures and Music folder for example are empty, haven’t fully explored, what else might be missing. The missing data definitely is on the time machine backup. Any ideas on what might have gone wrong here? Might try skipping the time machine backup and using Migration assistant directly Mac to Mac. One more thought: old Mac used case-sensitive Apple File System, new Mac doesn’t - might that be the source of the „error“? Thanks for your help! Sascha

Latest macOS Sequoia. tmutil version 4.0.0 (built Apr 22 2025) Because I am remote at the moment, I would like to use the command line tmutil to restore one folder (with many subfolders) on my computer to the state that it had 24 hours ago. since its 2025-06-10, this means 2025-06-09. I first want to restore the folder (/Users/me/Sync) to /tmp/ then inspect it, and if it is what I want, replace the current bad folder Sync with the good backup folder Sync. Started out well:

$ sudo bash
# tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Snapshots for disk /:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-05-31-122127.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-042552.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-052552.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-062552.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-072552.local

good start. Using /bin/df, I can infer that there are a whole lot of volumes, none with 2025-06-09, though, so I hope TM built the 2025-06-09's on top of the earlier one somehow. It is a bit odd that the 2025-05-31 one has a different time stamp in the df version, one 122127 in the list, but 122147 .

# df | grep 2025-0
...
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-05-31-122147.backup@/dev/disk7s2 3907025072  752036512 3089037832    20% 1067260 15445189160    0%   /Volumes/.timemachine/708C5462-0DBA-483C-9AED-590D75ADC0A0/2025-05-31-122147.backup
...

ok, let's try to restore:

# mkdir /tmp/SSS
# tmutil restore "/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/puck2025/2025-06-09-20255.local/Data/Users/me/Sync" "/tmp/SSS/"
/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/puck2025/2025-06-09-20255.local/Data/Users/ivo/Sync: The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory (error 2)
Restore failed

The error is pretty nondescript. There is more than enough space on the volume itself, and I just created the destination, so this is probably not it. It's probably my description of the source. so, I then tried a number of variations of this, with and without quotes, with the 2025-05-31-122127 and the oddly slightly different 2025-05-31-122147 , but always the same error. is there a more up-to-date guide to tmutil with working examples, or a way to elicit valid source listings, as in ls? pointers appreciated.

My Mac is on BigSur and I am using Carbon Copy Cloner to create a one on one disk which is bootable also. I have this setup running for years now and never noticed any problems – also on BigSur it worked. Now my Backup Drive crashed and I bought a new HDD. I have exactly build this HDD (one 1 TB partition for CCC for the one on one copy and another 1 TB partition for TimeMachine). But two major problems: The clone partition is the one that get booted after a restart – I also cannot choose another startup disk from system preferences since I only can see the actual booted one. So when I had booted with system SSD only this disk is shown and when I booted from the backup disk only this ons is shown. But the mac should boot from the internal disk by default, what could happened here? The Drive was always plugged in in a Thunderbolt 3 Dock. I also recently switched to an eGPU (Razer Core X Chroma) which now operates as my dock where the HDD is attached. But I think the problem occurred since the new replacement disk. Also when I plug in that drive directly on my macbook this drive get booted on restart. Another issue is that the TimeMachine partition of the disk get mountet sporadically and is making intense work but not running a time machine backup. I tried to disable the volume on spotlight which presents an error (time machine backup cannot be excluded since they are always excluded – something like that) but disabled it by command line with sudo mdutil -i off "/Volumes/TimeMachine". Now I think its better... Maybe you have an idea. Thanks! **-- Update** The regular automatic TimeMachine backup is disabled – I have an own task that runs every hour that mounts the volume, do the TM backup and unmount it. That also worked for years now.

How can I delete a folder backed up via Time Machine to a .backupbundle disk image? When I try to delete the folder, I get the error message, "The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified." I found a similar question, "How can I delete a file marked as backup item?" The accepted answer says that this is a bug that will be fixed in a coming update. Unfortunately, this answer was written in 2011 –– 11 years ago. I tried to comment on the answer, but I did not have enough reputation. > A little more precision regarding what you tried would be helpful. > "when I Delete the folder". Which folder? Is that on the source disk, > or is it in the backup? And how did you try to delete? Also what > version of macOS and what format (HFS+ or APFS) is the backup disk > image? /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro (Retina)/2021-05-02-065359/Macintosh HD 1/Users/brianschack/Transmission Downloads On the backup. I tried dragging the folder to the Trash in the Dock. macOS Big Sur 11.2.3. Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled). > The accepted answer on your linked questin is basically wrong. The > highest voted answer is correct - you are trying to delete from a > protected area. You cannot just delete Time Machine files from Finder. @Ryccardo wrote the highest-voted answer to the question, "How can I delete a file marked as backup item?" He says, "[L]ocate the item in the 'in space' Time Machine view[.]" This is a backup of a computer that I traded in. When I go to the in-space Time Machine view on my current computer, it shows me the backup of my current computer –– not the computer that I traded in. He also writes, "There exists a helper program (command-line binary) [...] which allows you to supply a command and argument to completely bypass the access restrictions." When I navigate to /System/Library/Extensions, I do not see TMSafetyNet.kext. In a different answer, @Evan Kroske writes, "It seems like the bypass program doesn't exist on Big Sur." How can I delete a file marked as backup item?

I found four similar questions, but they weren't exact duplicates.  I did get an impression from them that it isn't possible, but since my situation is slightly different, I thought it worthwhile to ask.
Blank is just that: no files except the unnecessary .fseventsd and Spotlight file.  But Christopher is a time machine backup that is almost full (4.78TB).  I would like to make this a single APFS container without losing any backup sets.  I have nothing else big enough to copy its contents (nor would I enjoy the hours it would take at USB 2.0 speeds).

On Monterey 12.7.4, I have used Time Machine to back up to an external hard drive. However, I would like to set up an additional network backup location so I don't have to remember to plug in my external drive. I have set up the samba share that I intend to use and am able to mount the share successfully on my mac. I see that I have read and write privileges and am able to create files and folders (ls -l shows drwx------). I am also able to view the share in Time Machine, and have set up Time Machine to use the share as an additional backup location. When I run Time Machine, it begins to run and see that a sparsebundle is created on share. However, seconds later, the backup fails and an exclamation mark appears next to the share location stating "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to "my share" The backup disk image could not be created." How can I fix this error and get backups working properly? I am especially perplexed because the sparsebundle does briefly appear in Finder and then quickly disappears at the time the backup fails. Edit: Including my smb.conf here:

[backups]

   comment=*name*

   path=*/path/to/share*

   read only=no

   valid users=*username*

   vfs objects=catia fruit streams_xattr

   fruit:time machine=yes