Fast, light macOS utility that performs Time Machine backups on all connected drives.
- 🚀 Fast - minimal overhead, tmbackup.awk
executes in only ~
15 ms.1 - 🎨 Intuitive - user-friendly, clear color-coded messages for every backup status.
- 🔒 Robust - ensures reliability with effective error handling during the backup.
- 📦 Self-contained - no dependencies, lightweight, uses POSIX
awk,sh(e.g.3629 bytes,186 lines).
Note
This utility is only intended to work in macOS.
If you have brew installed, just run:
$ brew install Neved4/tap/tmbackup$ ./tmbackup.shtmbackup | tee -a /path/to/output.log| Version | Supported |
|---|---|
macOS 14 Sonoma |
Yes ✅ |
macOS 13 Ventura |
Yes ✅ |
macOS 12 Monterey |
Yes ✅ |
macOS 11 Big Sur |
Yes ✅ |
Supported Awk and UNIX shells
tmbackup is built for macOS using /bin/sh and /usr/bin/awk. It
adheres to standards when possible, and is made to play nicely with other Awk
and POSIX sh versions too.
This allows to execute tmbackup with different shells:
dash /path/to/tmbackup.shOr to build your own parsing with different Awk implementations:
tmutil destinationinfo | mawk -f /path/to/tmbackup.awk| Shell | Version | Supported |
|---|---|---|
awk |
20230909 |
✅ Yes |
gawk |
5.3.0 |
✅ Yes |
goawk |
1.25.0 |
✅ Yes |
mawk |
1.3.4-20231126 |
✅ Yes |
| Shell | Version | Supported |
|---|---|---|
bash |
5.2.15 |
✅ Yes |
dash |
0.5.12 |
✅ Yes |
ksh93 |
93u+m/1.0.7 |
✅ Yes |
mksh |
59c |
✅ Yes |
oksh |
7.3 |
✅ Yes |
osh |
0.18.0 |
✅ Yes |
posh |
0.14.1 |
❌ No |
yash |
2.55 |
✅ Yes |
zsh |
5.9 |
✅ Yes |
More information on this topic: UX.md.
Note
If you have any cool ideas or suggestions to improve things, let me know!
Important
tmbackup does not differentiate between backups interrupted by a
hardware failure and a user manually skipping.
Thanks to @0risc and @goldbuick for testing and feedback.
tmbackup is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.
See the LICENSE file for details.
- matteocorti/tmstatus.sh - general overview and stats
- torstenvl/tmutils - history, marking and deduplication
- emrekaankocoglu/disposable-timemachine-docker - disposable container backups
- raphaelcohn/os-x-backup - encrypted backups to cloud storage
- Delvien/Timemachine-mount-usb-backup-then-dismount - mount drive, backup, dismount
- tjluoma/texbar-timemachine - monitor Time Machine status
- fedekrum/Mac-Time-Machine-status - get info on what Time Machine is doing
- tomtaylor/fix_timemachine - fix broken Time Machine NAS backups