macbac

Lists, controls and schedules efficient APFS snapshots for your convenience.

# let's take space efficient APFS snapshots every hour
# knowing they get cleaned up if necessary
% macbac schedule hourly
Installing daemon config to /Users/user/Library/LaunchAgents/com.hazcod.macbac.plist
Loading config to enable schedule...
Scheduled hourly snapshots!

# show our current snapshots
% macbac list
/Volumes/SSD
> 2020/12/30 10:23
> 2020/12/30 11:04
> 2020/12/30 11:05

# take a manual snapshot
% macbac snapshot
Assuming / is the volume we would like to snapshot.
Created local snapshot with date: 2020-12-30-111728
Snapshotted volume /

# let's remove snapshots but ensure we keep the 3 most recent
% macbac prune 3
Pruning 1 of 4 snapshots for /
Pruning snapshot 2021-02-04-155845 (1/1)

How does it work?

It's a convenient wrapper around tmutil and basically replicates the local snapshot feature Time Machine would perform when you are backing up to a remote disk.

Installation

Installation can be done straight from my Homebrew tap via brew install hazcod/homebrew-hazcod/macbac or just copy macbac.sh to your filesystem.

Setup

1. First enable Time Machine by running macbac enable. You may need to add Terminal.app to Full Disk Access in Security & Privacy.

2. Now schedule your snapshots e.g. hourly via macbac schedule hourly.

Usage

Usage: macbac <status|list|snapshot|enable|disable|schedule|deschedule|prune> <...>

To view Time Machine status: macbac status

To take a snapshot: macbac snapshot

To take a snapshot and keep 3: macbac snapshot 3

To prune but keep 5: macbac prune 5

To schedule hourly snapshots, keeping 24: macbac schedule hourly

To schedule hourly snapshots, keeping 3: macbac schedule hourly 3

To schedule daily snapshots, keeping 7: macbac schedule daily

To view when the next snapshot is going to be taken: macbac next