macOS Tahoe 26 Time Machine Backup Guide
macOS Tahoe 26 was released September 15, 2025.
Time Machine is the indispensable utility in macOS that you use to create a backup of your system and all its data locally, to an external hard drive. It’s a vital tool for musicians, pro audio engineers, and content creators. Time Machine is not only essential before you upgrade to a new version of macOS or to migrate to a new Mac; you can also use Time Machine every day to make incremental backups, so you can revert to earlier versions of most any document or app and recover your data.
Here’s how to create a Time Machine backup in macOS Tahoe 26.
- Why Use Time Machine?
- How to Back Up Your Mac
- How to Create a Time Machine backup
- Time Machine backup guides for earlier versions of macOS
Why Use Time Machine?
IMPORTANT: In everyday use, turn off Time Machine while recording and editing audio and music. Turn Time Machine back on after your session so it can continue backing up your files. For more information, see Sweetwater’s macOS Tahoe 26 Audio Optimization Guide.
If you are ready to get set up, feel free to skip this section and go right to How to Create a Time Machine Backup.
Time Machine provides you with a local backup of not only your data, but also the third-party apps, plug-ins and other software that you install on your Mac. The backups are made to an external hard drive connected to your Mac. Even if you use a cloud-based service such as Apple iCloud, you also need a local backup, and that’s why Apple provides both iCloud and Time Machine.
Because you have a local backup on an external hard drive, if something goes wrong, you can use Time Machine to restore your entire system quickly. Time Machine is also valuable for incremental file backup. You can recover individual files you have deleted, or revert a file to an earlier saved state.
If you decide you need to downgrade your current macOS to an earlier version that’s compatible with your Mac, you can use Time Machine to restore your data and third-party apps after downgrading.
How to Back Up Your Mac
Cloud-based backup
IMPORTANT: As with Time Machine, regardless of the backup method, you should turn off all cloud-based backup services while you are working in your DAW to prevent problems with recording and rendering audio. Follow the instructions in Sweetwater’s macOS Tahoe 26 Audio Optimization Guide.
Cloud-based backup is useful and valuable for working with documents and data, but cloud-based services generally do not back up the third-party apps and software you installed on your Mac. Cloud-based backups are not designed to enable you to restore your entire Mac if something goes wrong. That’s why you should think of using cloud-based services as complementary to Time Machine, and not as a replacement for it.
Apple’s cloud-based service is iCloud and iCloud Drive.
In addition, there are many third-party services.
Apple iCloud Drive
Apple’s iCloud, iCloud+, and iCloud Drive service lets you back up photos, documents, messages, and certain kinds of data from your Mac to Apple’s servers on the internet. You can access these centrally-backed-up files on multiple Mac computers, iPhones, iPads, and even Windows PCs. You can also use iCloud to share photos and other files among family members on their devices.
Learn more about iCloud’s features on Apple’s iCloud page.
Third-party cloud-based backup and file sharing
Commercial products such as Backblaze, iDrive and Carbonite are subscription services that run in the background and continuously back up the documents and data from one computer to the cloud. They generally don’t back up the apps you have installed on your Mac. They are particularly useful for “disaster recovery,” if your Mac gets stolen or your home gets damaged.
Services such as DropBox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive, on the other hand, are often used for a different purpose: to share specific folders of files with other users remotely.
Local backup with Time Machine
Time Machine backs up all the files on your Mac other than macOS itself and the apps that come with macOS. Time Machine backs up all your third-party apps, system files, support files, plug-ins, and sound libraries on your startup disk. If your Time Machine external backup disk is large enough, you can also use it to back up other disks attached to your Mac, such as making backups of project files you record in your DAW. A Time Machine backup on an external disk can also be used with Apple Migration Assistant to move all your data and apps from an old Mac to a new one.
How to Create a Time Machine backup
Time Machine in macOS Tahoe 26
What kind of hard drive do I need?
You need an external hard drive that connects to your Mac over USB or Thunderbolt. The drive should be at least double the capacity of your Mac’s startup disk. Although it’s convenient to have a fast drive with a fast connection speed, that’s not essential for a Time Machine backup, so a large-capacity spinning hard drive might be a more affordable option than a solid-state drive (SSD).
You can connect the drive directly to your Mac or to a powered USB or Thunderbolt hub or dock.
Automatically configure a Time Machine backup disk
macOS prompts you for permission the first time you attach any external disk. Click Allow.
If you have not set up Time Machine on your Mac, the first time you connect a large external disk, a Finder prompt will say “Time Machine can back up your Mac. Do you want to use this disk to back up?”
Hold your pointer over the dialog that appears and click Options. Choose Set Up.
A Time Machine external disk in macOS Tahoe 26.
Time Machine will reformat your external disk and set it up as a backup disk.
You can recognize that the disk has been designated for Time Machine because the disk icon will change to green, with the Time Machine icon on it.
After a few seconds the first backup will start. Depending on the amount of data on your startup disk and the speed of your external disk, the first backup could take a long time, even several hours. Be sure to leave your Mac running until the backup is complete.
If you get an error message saying that the disk cannot be formatted, go to the Disk Utility section below and reformat the disk according to the instructions.
The Time Machine drop-down menu in the Menu Bar
After you set up a disk, a new Time Machine icon will appear in the right corner of your Menu Bar.
Clicking the Time Machine icon will cause a menu to drop down. Here you will find contextual controls.
Manually configure a Time Machine backup disk
Manually configuring a backup disk for Time Machine in System Settings
If your Mac doesn’t prompt you to create a Time Machine backup disk, or you need to set up an additional drive, you can do this in System Settings. This is also where you configure the frequency of the backups, turn off backing up, and other functions.
- Go to System Settings > General > Time Machine. Click on Add Backup Disk.
- Select the disk that’s attached to your Mac that you want to use. Click Set up Disk.
- You have the option of encrypting the Time Machine disk. If you choose this, the Mac will store the password and use it automatically when making backups. However, when it’s time to restore data from the backup, only someone who knows the password can use it.
- Click the button to turn off Encrypt Backup if you don’t want this feature.
- For Disk Usage Limit, select None so that Time Machine can use the entire disk for backups.
- Click Done.
Time Machine will format your disk. It will then appear in the Time Machine pane, and the first regular backup will start.
Working with Time Machine
Now that you’ve got your first backup, learn how to restore individual files in the Apple support article Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac.
To use a Time Machine backup with Migration Assistant to move to a new Mac, learn more at the Apple support article Restore your Mac from a backup.
Formatting a Time Machine Disk in Disk Utility
If Time Machine gave you an error message that it could not format your external hard drive, try reformatting it in Disk Utility.
- Go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
- In Disk Utility, choose View > Show All Devices
- In the pane on the left, select your external hard drive. You want to select the entire volume, not a volume lower down in the hierarchy.
- Click Erase.
- Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose GUID Partition Map.
- Click the Format pop-up menu, and choose APFS.
- Enter a name for the drive.
- Click Erase, then click Done. Wait for the reformat to complete.
Time Machine should now be able to use your disk for a Time Machine backup, so go to the section above, Manually configure a Time Machine backup disk, and work from there.
Learn more in Apple Support’s Disk Utility User Guide.
Time Machine backup guides for earlier versions of macOS
Sweetwater also has Time Machine backup guides for these older versions of macOS:
- macOS Time Machine Backup Guide (macos 13 Ventura, macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia)
- macOS 12 Monterey Time Machine Backup Guide
- macOS 10.15 Catalina Time Machine Backup Guide
- macOS 10.14 Mojave Time Machine Backup Guide
- macOS 10.13 High Sierra Time Machine Backup Guide
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