Regular backups are essential. If your Mac fails for any reason, it’s important to know you’ve got another copy of all your files somewhere. Fortunately, macOS comes with a simple yet powerful tool for doing the job: Time Machine.

How to Back Up a Mac With Time Machine

Time Machine is a free backup tool that’s included with every Mac. It keeps a day’s worth of hourly backups, a month’s worth of daily backups, and weekly backups until there’s no more space on your drive. It also saves “local snapshots” on the internal storage, so you’ve got a small record to work with even when you’re not plugged in.

To get started, choose a suitable drive for use with Time Machine. Connect it, click “Allow” if prompted, then go to System Settings > General > Time Machine. Click “Add Backup Disk,” select the drive, then click “Set Up Disk.”

Now fill in the details. You can choose whether to encrypt and password-protect your backups, and limit how much space is used for backups if it’s a particularly large drive.

Click “Done” and the process will start. The first Time Machine backup takes the longest, as everything on your drive is saved. Subsequent backups won’t take as long, as only new and changed files will have to be backed up.

While Time Machine does include everything by default, you can click the “Options” button in the Time Machine window and exclude certain folders. For example, you could exclude your Applications folder to save space on the Time Machine backup.

You can add more drives to have your Mac back up to multiple locations, rotating between them so you can have backups in two or more locations.

Local Snapshots

Enabling Time Machine on a MacBook will enable the “local snapshots” feature. Your Mac will save a single daily snapshot as well as a single weekly snapshot of your files to its internal storage if the Time Machine backup drive isn’t available. This provides you with a way to recover deleted files or restore previous versions of files even when you don’t have access to your backup drive.

Automatic vs. Manual Backups in Time Machine

Time Machine normally works automatically. If your drive is connected to the computer (or the network location is available if you’re using a remote drive), it will back up every hour. You can disconnect your external drive when using your Mac during the day and plug it in when you get home in the evening, and the backup will automatically begin once connected.

You can also choose to perform manual backups instead. To do this, open Time Machine’s settings screen and click “Options.” Set Backup Frequency to “Manual.”

You can then click the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and select “Back Up Now” to perform a manual backup at any time. Automatic backups are usually a better option—you’ll have more backups and you won’t be able to forget about it.

How to Restore Individual Files From a Backup

Click the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and select “Browse Time Machine Backups” to enter the Restore interface. This screen allows you to locate deleted files or previous versions of files and restore them.

Select a date and time in the bottom-right corner of the window to “go back in time” to the point where the file you want to restore existed. Dates in red indicate the backup is stored on an external drive, while dates in white indicate local snapshots stored on your Mac’s internal storage.

The windows work just like regular Finder windows. You can use the search field to find files by name or format. You can also select a file and hit the spacebar to use the Quick Look feature that lets you preview documents, images, and some videos.

When you locate a file you want to restore, select it, and click the “Restore” button. This copies it back to the same folder on your Mac—if it will overwrite an existing file, you’ll be asked what you want to do.

Alternatively, hit Escape to exit the backups screen.

How to Restore an Entire Mac

Time Machine also allows you to restore an entire Mac’s system state.

To do it, you need to boot into Recovery Mode. Turn off your Mac then hold down the power button until you see “Loading Startup Options” on the screen, then click “Options” when it appears. You’ll see an option to restore your entire system from a Time Machine Backup here.

How to Restore Time Machine Backups on Another Mac

To restore files from a Time Machine backup on another Mac, navigate to the Applications > Utilities folder and open the Migration Assistant application. You can also press Command+Space, type “Migration Assistant,” and press Enter.

Connect your Time Machine backup drive and use Migration Assistant to copy the backed-up files from your previous Mac to your new Mac.

You can also use Migration Assistant when setting up a new Mac, making a Time Machine backup a very quick way to get all your files and apps onto a new computer.

How to Restore a Time Machine Backup on Windows

Time Machine is a Mac tool intended for use with Macs. It is technically possible to access your files on Windows, but it isn’t easy and is only a workaround. Don’t rely on it as a way to share files between Windows and Mac.

When Time Machine prepares your drive for the first backup, it will format it with the Mac APFS file system, which isn’t compatible with Windows. You will need a third-party app like APFS for Windows or TransMac to get Windows to be able to mount the drive. Both are premium apps, but they have free trials that might be enough if you need to access your Time Machine files in an emergency.

When you get it working, you don’t get a fancy interface to view and restore your files. Instead, you get a simple folder tree that you’ll have to manually search through to find what you need. You can then copy the files to your Windows drive.

If you’d just like to stop using Time Machine and use the drive with a Windows PC, you can easily reformat the drive in Windows 11.

Time Machine is free on every Mac and once you’ve got it set up, it works away quietly and reliably in the background without needing any further input. It ensures you’ve always got a copy of your files should your Mac break down, or if you accidentally edit or delete something important. If you aren’t using it already, there’s no better time to start.