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The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) Changelog

What's new in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 2.02

Jan 23, 2024
  • Added checkbox to set whether to run scheduling checks improved compatibility with macOS 11-13
  • Added compatible Speed check for macOS 11.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 2.01 (Jan 10, 2024)

  • Added checkbox to allow truncation of error messages.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 2.00 (Jan 10, 2024)

  • Parsing revised for Sonoma and APFS backup storage
  • Added log view
  • Added new Help system
  • Removed code integrity check.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.19 (Sep 9, 2021)

  • This new version includes a specific fix for Monterey, in which T2M2 wasn’t able to estimate free space on the backup storage. It also has a couple of minor improvements which should help those using Big Sur and Monterey.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.18 (Apr 14, 2021)

  • Following my discovery of changes made in about macOS 11.2, I am now working through my apps bringing their access to time in line with its new behaviour, so that you should be able to run them regardless of your clock settings. Even if your Mac uses a Buddhist calendar, a 12-hour clock and is set to summer time in Mongolia, dates and times should now appear correctly.
  • This new version tackles this in two ways. During its opening checks, it establishes whether macOS can return time values in the format which it needs. If it can’t, because of further changes in Big Sur, it will prompt you to switch to a 24-clock. That should never happen.
  • Once it has confirmed that time values are generated correctly, all its dates and times should appear consistently, even those shown in the headers of its reports. If you come across any anomaly or error, please let me know as soon as you can.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.16 (Nov 13, 2020)

  • The Time Machine Mechanic, T2M2 for short, now works better with the new feature of backing up to APFS volumes in macOS 11 Big Sur. Version 1.16 is strongly recommended for anyone who intends using that exciting new feature.
  • The main report, produced when you click on the Check Time Machine button, now gives results which are specific to APFS backups, including an analysis of each backup in terms of space used and total number of files. At present, these are taken straight from the report in the log made by Time Machine, as I expect them to change over the coming months. I will progressively incorporate them into the main report as they stabilise.
  • Because APFS backups differ in many respects from those to HFS+ and NAS, there’s also an APFS button which displays a log excerpt which gives a blow-by-blow account of backups over the selected period. These should be ideal for anyone wanting to understand the new process better, and in the event that you encounter problems. If you contact Apple Support, they might well appreciate this level of detail too.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.15 (Aug 6, 2020)

  • n case you missed the news, beta-testers of Big Sur have revealed that macOS 11.0 can save its backups to APFS volumes, indeed those are now the preferred format for backup stores for both local and network Time Machine backups. Although Apple doesn’t yet include this in the list of Big Sur’s features for users, indications are that this is intended to be a feature of the first full release later this year.
  • What happens during a backup to APFS is quite different from the normal process in Catalina, and when the backup is complete, the Finder creates a snapshot and uses that to give the illusion that the backup is just another folder containing everything which you expected to be backed up. Quite how it arrives at this is more of a mystery: in some cases, Time Machine backs up just the parts of a file which have changed, which can lead to economy of space used by that backup.
  • My free utility The Time Machine Mechanic, known for short as T2M2, works by analysing the entries made by Time Machine in the log. Normally when a new major release of macOS is in beta-testing, I avoid trying to make changes to T2M2 until the final release, as keeping pace with all the changes in each beta can waste a lot of time. With Big Sur, things are different, as its changes are so substantial.
  • T2M2 version 1.15 therefore adds a new button which generates a summary of previous backups in terms of their main events, such as mounting and unmounting snapshots. It also reports in detail the breakdown of items to be backed up (“events” collected from the FSEvents database), and, when the backup is complete, an analysis of different methods of backing up. The latter is important as it reveals how many files have been “delta copied”, which I understand to mean that they were backed up as a changed block instead of the whole file.
  • As the log messages written by Time Machine stabilise during the beta phase, I will refine and improve that information so that it provides the meaningful functional summaries already seen in the main backup analysis, which also holds good for Big Sur systems.
  • If you’re testing the Big Sur betas, I’d strongly recommend that you test out Time Machine backups, particularly those to APFS volumes, which are now the default. Time Machine is normally one of the least tested parts of macOS before it’s released, and needs all the testing it can get. If you do encounter problems, please report them to Apple so that those bugs can be fixed before Big Sur is released.
  • Hopefully this new version of T2M2 will help you do that, and gain insights into the new mechanism for backing up. Additional detail is also available from the Time Machine log feature in Mints, and of course in Ulbow and Consolation.
  • This new version of T2M2 also improves documentation, and is a Universal App so it should run natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.14 (Feb 27, 2020)

  • Version 1.14 of my popular free diagnostic utility for Time Machine backups has only one relatively small change, but I think that many will appreciate it.
  • Previous versions have required you to press the Tab or Enter key after manually editing the period which it will check. This version no longer requires that: just type in the number of hours you want checked, and click on either the Check Time Machine or Check Speed buttons as you wish. There is a small price to pay for this, though. If you manually edit that number and then click on the stepper control, you’re likely to see a number which is out of sequence, as it’s still based on what the stepper thinks the number is. I am looking at fixing this in the future, but thought this added convenience might be welcome.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.13 (Feb 20, 2020)

  • Previous versions of my free utility The Time Machine Mechanic, or T2M2, have focussed on detecting errors and failures which occur during Time Machine backups. Although these are among the most serious problems you’re likely to encounter when backing up, many users have performance problems which can sometimes make first full backups so slow that they’re simply not feasible. This seems particularly likely in Catalina, and most of all in 10.15.3. This new version of T2M2 now gives access to backup transfer rates and other information which can help diagnose and solve slow backup problems.
  • It does so through a third and new button, Check Speed, which analyses log entries over the last hour or more for those which report the performance of a backup in progress. I don’t recall when these were introduced, but they have certainly been present throughout Catalina’s release period, and may date back even to Sierra: I’d be interested to know how you get on with older versions of macOS, please.
  • T2M2 displays all performance entries for backups over the period selected. These provide the following information:
  • datestamp of the entry,
  • total transferred so far during that backup, in TB/GB/MB and the number of items,
  • the total which will be transferred to complete that backup, in TB/GB/MB and number,
  • the current transfer rate in MB/s and items/s,
  • the path of the last item written within the backup being made.
  • As I explained a couple of days ago, you can use that information to work out where backups have become interminably slow, and consider adding the item or its folder to Time Machine’s exclude list. This is all explained in detail in T2M2’s Help book. This new feature should work with backups run automatically, those run manually and by tools such as TimeMachineEditor, to both local and networked storage.
  • In addition to this major new feature, this version includes:
  • the font used has changed to the system monospace font, largely to cope with these log extracts;
  • the menus have been tidied up, removing redundant items;
  • I have improved the robustness of its log parsing, and enhanced its reporting of parsing errors;
  • the Help book has been extensively revised.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.12 (Jan 13, 2020)

  • Version 1.11 of T2M2 has a bug in determining whether the current user is in the admin group, which erroneously fails if the user is a member of a very small number of groups, which is unusual but prevents those users from running the app successfully. Thanks to Joe for reporting this. T2M2 version 1.12 fixes this

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.11 (Dec 27, 2019)

  • Version 1.11 brings a couple of small changes which should help anyone using it in Catalina.
  • I have recently noticed that the range of strategies available to determine what to back up includes a sixth, cached events. These appear to be used for Data volumes in the first automated backup made after upgrading to Catalina. This new version detects backups made using cached events in macOS 10.15. I have also taken the opportunity to update its Help book with further detailed information about reports generated in Catalina.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.9 (Dec 2, 2019)

  • When the T2M2 app opens, it now checks whether the current user has admin privileges. To be more precise, whether they are a member of the admin group (80). If they aren’t, it displays an alert, and when you dismiss that, the app quits. This is because T2M2 performs analyses on the log, and those are only available to admin users. One side-effect of this is that, from version 1.9 onwards, you can’t use RunT2M2 to launch T2M2 from a non-admin account, something which has become increasingly unreliable anyway. This new test should be a better way to ensure that you don’t inadvertently try to use T2M2 when logged in as a ‘regular’ user.
  • When run in Catalina, T2M2 harvests and displays additional information about the methods used to determine what to back up on different volumes. This is detailed below.
  • Minor improvements in the form of additional emoji have been added to the text display, to make any problems clearer.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.7 (Jun 18, 2019)

  • You can now change the font size used for the text report view. Simply press Command+ (Command and the = key) to enlarge, or Command- (Command and the – key) to shrink. You don’t have to click in the view to do this, nor select any text there. The size steps in 1 point increments between 4 and 60 points, and the size set when you close the window and quit T2M2 is used as the default when you next open the app.
  • The app now saves the last window size and position on screen, and when opened next uses those as it default settings.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.3 (Jul 22, 2018)

  • It now runs as much as possible of its checks in a background thread. This means that you shouldn’t see the ‘spinning beachball’ much, if at all. Instead, there is now a ‘busy spinner’ shown in its slightly wider window.
  • The results view in its window has better settings which should improve your interaction with them, and their display.
  • It now has a custom window class, which works around potential complaints from macOS about having to use the default.
  • It has been ported to Swift 4.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.2 (Jul 22, 2018)

  • Should fix a bug in which T2M2 reports an error message rather than completing an analysis of Time Machine backups.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.1 Beta (Jul 22, 2018)

  • Time Machine diagnostics now available for Sierra, and (in beta) for High Sierra.

New in The Time Machine Mechanic (T2M2) 1.0 (Jul 22, 2018)

  • Now places its report in a scrolling text view, has extensive Help book, and more. The only tool for checking that Time Machine backups are being made properly.