How Do I Delete Time Machine Backups on My Mac?
Generally, Time Machine automatically deletes old backups. Once your storage device is running low on space, macOS deletes anything unnecessary, such as your oldest Time Machine backups. However, if you need to delete your backup manually, here’s what to do.
How Do I Delete All My Time Machine Backups?
If you want to delete all your backups, you don’t need to do it date by date. Here’s how to delete all your Time Machine backups at once.
How Do I Delete My Time Machine Backups Via a Network Drive?
If your backups are stored on an external drive which you connect to via Wi-Fi, the process is slightly different as the files are stored as a sparsebundle file. Here’s how to access it.
How Do I Delete My Time Machine Backups Via Terminal?
If you are comfortable using macOS’s Terminal app to change things via command line, it’s fairly straightforward to see which backups are available. Here’s how to delete individual backups using Terminal.
Is It Okay to Delete Old Time Machine Backups?
Time Machine does a fairly good job of maintaining itself. It automatically deletes the oldest backups whenever the disk becomes full so there’s rarely a need for you to delete files individually. To do so, follow one of the above steps. Some methods can ‘reset’ Time Machine by deleting certain plist files but these can lead to issues or you losing your entire Time Machine backup database by mistake. For the most part, it’s wise to leave Time Machine alone if your backups are important.
