On the right edge is a timeline that denotes the date of each successful backup. When you do so, be prepared because your entire Desktop, everything you know about the Mac interface, it all vanishes, to be replaced by this sort of outer space interface: Simply type Command-Space (e.g., hold down the Command key and press the Space bar) and type in “time machine”. Through the fabulously useful Spotlight search and launch capability, of course! This is where it’s a bit confusing: I need to launch Time Machine while looking at the folder with the missing content to start out there and make recovery a lot easier. You can see the problem if you look closely: I have “wk2” and “wk3” but no “wk1”. To start, here’s a folder on my Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite system where I recently had a file vanish: And even Apple’s Time Machine works better as a quiet backup system than as a recovery system because it’s hard to figure out how to get into Time Machine to recover the lost file or folder.įortunately you have this simple tutorial to read, and once I figured out how to take screen shots of Time Machine in action (not a simple thing) it’s all easy to understand with one handy Mac trick… Too many systems make one or the other easy, but it’s rare to have both be simple. Backup systems have two basic tasks, to back up all your files, hopefully invisibly, and to make it super easy for you to recover any files you’ve lost, gotten corrupted, deleted or otherwise.

How do i use time machine for mac