How do I delete a Time Machine backup?

How do I delete a Time Machine backup?.

Time Machine is the best way to protect the data on your Mac. It is able to fully automate backups and makes it easy to restore files and folders. When using Time Machine, you may sometimes need to free up space by deleting certain backup files and snapshots.

Read on to learn how to delete Time Machine backups from external and internal media on Mac.

Why You Must Delete Time Machine Backups

When you set up Time Machine on an external drive, it creates a permanent archive of backups or snapshots of your Mac’s data. This allows you to restore specific versions of files and folders, sometimes years old. Time Machine is smart enough to delete the oldest snapshots to free up space, making manual storage space management unnecessary.

However, if you are also using the backup drive as a personal storage medium (only possible if it is formatted in HFS+ or Mac OS Extended format), you can delete all previous backups of any file or folder to free up space. Or you can delete certain pictures.

In addition, Time Machine stores hourly snapshots of your data locally if you don’t have a Time Machine drive connected. If you run out of space on your Mac’s internal storage, you can delete individual or all local snapshots via the Terminal.

Delete File and Folder Backups via Time Machine

Time Machine allows you to delete all backups of any file or folder on an external hard drive or SSD. The following steps do not apply to APFS (Apple File System) Time Machine drives.

1. Connect your Time Machine drive to your Mac.

2. Select the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and select Sign In to Time Machine. Or open the launcher and select Other > Time Machine.

3. Navigate to the location of the file or folder and select it. If you have already deleted this item, use the timeline to the right of Time Machine until you find it in the previous snapshot.

4. Select the gear icon at the top of the Finder window and select “Delete all [file/folder name] backups”.

5. Select OK in the confirmation popup.

6. Enter your Mac’s administrator password and click OK to confirm.

Time Machine will continue to include the file or folder in new backups. If you want to stop this, you must add it to Time Machine’s exclusion list (more on this below).

Delete Time Machine Snapshots Using Finder

Time Machine stores incremental backups of your files and folders as individual snapshots. You can delete them directly by accessing the Time Machine drive through Finder. This is possible on both HFS+ and APFS Time Machine drives.

1. Launch Finder and select your Time Machine backup drive from the sidebar.

2. Open the Backups.backupdb folder and then the [Your Mac Name] subfolder to access your Time Machine backups. If the drive uses the APFS format, all snapshots will be in the root directory.

3. Find the Time Machine snapshot you want to delete. Since snapshot file names are displayed in YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS format, try sorting them using the Name column to make it easier to find the specific snapshot you want to delete.

4. Control-click the photo you want to delete and select Move to Trash.

5. Select Continue to confirm.

6. Enter your Mac’s administrator password and click OK.

7. Control-click or right-click the Recycle Bin icon in the Mac Dock and select Empty Trash.

Note. If you are unable to empty the Trash, you need to disable System Integrity Protection on your Mac. To do this, enter the Terminal through macOS Recovery and run the disable csrutil command.

Delete Time Machine Snapshots Using Terminal

An alternative way to delete Time Machine snapshots involves using the terminal on macOS. You start by listing all the snapshot pathnames in a terminal window. You then re-run the command to remove the desired snapshots.

1. Connect your Time Machine drive to your Mac.

2. Open the launcher and select Other > Terminal.

3. Run the following terminal command to view the list of Time Machine snapshots:

list of tmutil backups

On HFS+ Time Machines drives, you will see the full path to each snapshot. If the drive is formatted in APFS format, you will only see a list of filenames.

4. Run the following command to delete the snapshot, replacing snapshot-path/name with the path (HFS+) or name (APFS) of the backup, enclosing it in double quotes:

sudo tmutil remove “snapshot path/name”

5. Enter your Mac’s administrator password to authenticate the action and press Enter.

6. Repeat these steps for any other pictures you want to delete.

Delete Local Snapshots Using Terminal

Time Machine creates automatic hourly snapshots of your Mac’s local storage, giving you the ability to recover a limited amount of data even if you don’t have a backup drive with you. However, if you run out of free space soon, you can delete them via the Terminal.

1. Open Launchpad and select Other > Terminal.

2. Run the following command to open the list of local snapshots:

tmutil listlocalssnapshots /

3. Delete the Time Machine snapshot using the command below, replacing [snapshot-name] with the snapshot name (only the YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS part):

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots [snapshot name]

4. Enter your Mac’s administrator password to authenticate the action and press Enter.

5. Repeat these steps for any other pictures you want to delete.

Disable Local Snapshots (macOS Sierra and Earlier Only)

If you’re a Mac user with macOS 10.12 Sierra or earlier, you can prevent Time Machine from taking local snapshots. This action also forcibly deletes all local snapshots. You can re-enable local snapshots if you wish.

To do this, open the Terminal and run the following command line:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Run the following command if you want to reactivate local Time Machine snapshots:

sudo tmutil enablelocal

Exclude Files and Folders in Time Machine

You can prevent Time Machine from including certain files and folders in your backups. This is ideal if you want to keep certain items from taking up space on your Time Machine drive, such as temporary files like Safari or Apple TV downloads.

1. Control-click or right-click the System Preferences icon in the Mac Dock and select Time Machine.

2. Click the Options button in the lower right corner of the Time Machine window.

3. Select Add (plus icon).

4. Select the file or folder you want to exclude and click Exclude.

5. Repeat these steps for any other files or folders you want to exclude.

Cleanup Complete

Deleting old Time Machine backups can help you free up space, but it’s best to let Time Machine do its thing and only intervene if available storage starts to run low. Also, don’t forget that you can exclude items from your backups and prevent the Time Machine drive from filling up faster.