Time Machine icon
Time Machine icon

Time Machine

 171 likes

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

Interface

License model

  • FreeProprietary

Country of Origin

  • US flagUnited States

Platforms

  • Mac  Mac built-in software.
3.1 / 5 Avg rating (7)
171likes
9comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  Automatic Backup
  2.  Differential Backup
  3.  Incremental Backup
  4.  Schedule Backup
  5.  File Versioning
  6.  Encrypted Backup
  7.  Bundled with macOS

Time Machine News & Activities

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Time Machine information

  • Developed by

    US flagApple
  • Licensing

    Proprietary and Free product.
  • Rating

    Average rating of 3.1
  • Alternatives

    91 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Categories

Backup & SyncOS & Utilities

Our users have written 9 comments and reviews about Time Machine, and it has gotten 171 likes

Time Machine was added to AlternativeTo by Mogelfar on Mar 4, 2009 and this page was last updated Oct 19, 2021.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Nicolas
Jul 18, 2019
1

Impossible to manage the backup scheduling (v.g. only during the night to avoid resources use during work time)

Top Negative Comment
sdrawkcab
May 8, 2018
3

I appreciate the simplicity in design, however this can also be a con working against it as well. I lost data stored by Time Machine due to what I feel to be a design flaw. The software will make backups regularly and consistently. However it will not verify the content of the backups it makes except for once every 6 months. That is just how it's been programmed to function. Make the backups, but don't verify the backups except for once every 6 months. What this means is that there is a small window of opportunity that a file you expect is there, actually did not get stored / copied over properly. I had a file that was backed up roughly 1 month after the previous 6 month verification had been done. It so happened that the file was empty. Time Machine had made the file placeholder but not completed transferring it over, leaving an empty placeholder behind -- a useless file. That was the last time I decided to trust time machine.

taketheblueberrycum
Jan 16, 2024
0

slow as heck Takes more time to backup a drive than it does for an SSD to end its life span.

altmagw3k
Apr 30, 2023
0

As someone who works with Macs on a daily basis, I can tell you TimeMachine on Mac OS is extremely frustrating.. It's supposed to be easy to use, but at the same isn't very customisable and does not give much "feedback", so whenever you're confronted with what seems to be a bug, you'll have to go deep in the logs and try to understand what is wrong..

When it works, it's simple and good enough for most people. Unfornately, i've seen a lot of bugs (unable to start backup, unable to finish backup, unable to restore...) with TimeMachine be it on external disks, NAS, etc..

I simply don't trust it at all. Hopefully Apple improves it in the future

alteer8
Mar 30, 2023
0

It does its job, and it does it well. Easy enough to just pick a disk, flip the switch and have it working.

It handles file versioning, system restore and system migration.

Nothing too fancy or super-customisable, but it works

Duncan Briggs
May 2, 2021
1

Time Machine does not allow me to disable notifications, and it does not appear in the Notifications preference pane. I searched online, but I couldn't find any way to disable notifications.

asphaltkisser
Nov 21, 2018
1

Worked like a charm since the past 8 years I have used a mac.

Never failed!

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7 of 9 comments

What is Time Machine?

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.