As Time Machine has changed, first to back up APFS volumes, then to create backups as snapshots, its needs have changed. This makes it complicated to decide which local snapshots you can delete without affecting its backups.
Time Machine
Fundamentally simple: a preserved copy of a volume at a moment in time. How its size can only increase with time, how they’re managed, what they’re used for, and the tools for using them.
In a quest to reduce the number of processes running in macOS Tahoe, consider the example of Time Machine backups, which can easily be replaced by 3rd party alternatives.
When I started my Mac up, its external backup storage was present as expected, but couldn’t be opened. It turned out that Time Machine had stopped backing up after 12:35 the previous day, but hadn’t reported the problem.
T2M2 is nearly 9 years old. Here’s a walk through its summary reports on Time Machine backups. and an outline of what you’ll see in its log extracts.
How to exclude folders and files from these services, with new problems apparent in macOS Tahoe over exclusions from Time Machine backups.
A complex set of rules with optional flags determines whether any given xattr is preserved when copying, saving, syncing with a cloud service, backing up, and more. Here they are.
What do you do when you discover your Mac’s Data volume has run out of free space? A guide to working with snapshots, iCloud Drive, and other tricks to salvage your Mac. And how to prevent this from happening again.
Updates to Cirrus (iCloud), Revisionist (versions), Spundle (sparse bundles) and T2M2 (Time Machine)
Four updates to popular tools, aimed mainly at compatibility with Tahoe, covering iCloud Drive tests, tools for document versions, creating sparse bundles, and checking your Time Machine backups are working properly.
If you’ve got large files like Virtual Machines or media libraries on the Data volume on your Mac’s internal SSD, use this method to keep the size of its snapshots smaller.
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