Whether you just necessitate to find an honest-to-goodness version of a document , deliver a document you accidentally deleted , require to replicate over all your options , files and pamphlet to a new Mac , or if you need to recover your Mac from an sure-enough backup , Apple ’s Time Machine computer software makes it really gentle .
If you have a Time Machine backup handy , here ’s how to restore from Time Machine , how to recuperate files from your back up , and how to use Time Machine to migrate to a new Mac , and more .
If you have n’t already set up Time Machine to back up your Mac read : How to back up your Mac with Time Machine . You may also findHow to back up a Macuseful .
How to restore from Time Machine
Time Machine is n’t just for those prison term when you need to situate a version of a document you were work on two days or two months ago . It ’s also a really promiscuous way to move from one Mac to another , peculiarly if the Mac you are moving from is n’t process any more . you could also utilize Time Machine to revert to an earliest translation of macOS .
We ’ll look at the various scenarios below , including :
How to restore from Time Machine to a new Mac
you may use a Time Machine backup to transmit all your files , options and preferences from an one-time Mac to a unexampled Mac .
Your novel Mac hail with a tool called Migration Assistant that you could use to make this process really prosperous . Here ’s how to use Time Machine to migrate to a new Mac .
Before you begin , it go without tell that you should check that you have a Time Machine backup of your old Mac .
How to restore your Mac from a backup
There are muckle of reasons why you might want to restore your Mac to an earlier time . It ’s often the best root if your Mac has started behave unusually as it take into account you to go back to a time before everything went wrong . Here ’s how to restore a Time Machine backup using Recovery modality .
Note that this will recuperate your old Mac over the top of your current single file – so if you have created anything after the relief you are recuperate from you ’ll want to make a copy of them on an external drive .
We have Recovery on a Mac here .
How to start up your Mac from Time Machine
What if you do n’t want to find everything from your Time Machine championship onto your Mac ? fortuitously you could set off up from a Time Machine backup , perhaps if there is an issue with your system but you are n’t uncoerced to recuperate it yet , or if you are running a young interpretation of the Mac operating system on your Mac and require to keep things disjoined .
How to inherit the Time Machine backup of an old Mac (or not)
you’re able to move the backup history from one Mac to another , but after the new Mac inherits the backup account , you wo n’t be able to proceed using the backup history with the original Mac
This is all right if you ’re replacing the old Mac and want the new Mac to use the old backup files . Therefore , select the option Inherit Backup .
However , if you design to continue to use your old Mac , choose Create New Backup when you plug your drive into the new Mac . This way you will preserve the retiring backup history and start up new backups for the new Mac .
[ Note that in MacOS Big Sur Apple has made it potential to make a APFS Time Machine reliever , rather than using HPFs . If your Time Machine back up is in APFS you will not be able to recover it to a Mac that is n’t running Big Sur . Read : Time Machine in conclusion gets support for APFS in macOS Big Sur ]
How to recover a file from a Time Machine back up
If you just call for to restore an early rendering of a filing cabinet you were working on , perhaps because you accidentally deleted it , or you die a bit crazy editing it only to realise that you had made a huge mistake . Luckily you’re able to get the previous interpretation of that file cabinet back by follow the steps below . You may not even require an external Time Machine backup as your Mac will automatically back up documents topically going back for some meter , depending on which program you are using ( we ’ll look at that scenario next ) .
If you have a Time Machine substitute follow these stairs :
How to access old versions of files without Time Machine
If you do n’t have your external drive W. C. Handy you may be able to restore from a recent backup on your Mac . In fact , you do n’t even call for to be using Time Machine .
For case , if you are using Pages , follow these step to regain an early version of a document :
Non - Apple programs may not keep ‘ snapshots ’ in the same way , but if you have been making a Time Machine backup , you still may have access to them even without your international drive plugged in :
We coverhow to retrieve Word documents here .
